The Duke University Libraries’ current Sociology collection is broad, with a competitive selection of journals, major e-book packages, and databases, with particular strengths in race, ethnicity and equality; organizational and economic sociology; health and demography; religion and social change; social networks and computational science; and culture and cognition.
Traditional sociology collections focus on the study of human social relationships and institutions. The complexity of modern life has made the study of sociology increasingly diverse and interdisciplinary. Topics range from religion to crime, the inequities aligned with class and race to the shared beliefs of humanity and community, from family structures to national politics, from the divisions of race and social class to the shared beliefs of a common culture, and from structural stabilities to radical changes in entire societies. Today’s sociology collections need to preserve past understandings of culture and societies while simultaneously expanding to support the research and discovery of the future.
The Duke sociology librarian currently works with faculty and students whose research focuses on such diverse areas as psychosocial consequences of chronic illness for older adults, global value chains, human development, health disparities, and how group behaviors affect social, political, and economic structures and responses. DUL wishes to continue to offer an exceptional sociology collection while increasing and strengthening it to facilitate the research and teaching of the Duke University Department of Sociology as well as researchers more broadly at Duke whose interests intersects with sociological inquiry.
Establish a restricted Collection Endowment ($300,000)
A restricted collection endowment will support both the teaching and the research missions of the university. It will also enhance Duke's reputation as a major site for conducting research in sociology and its related disciplines.
A collection endowment will ensure the continuous development of a distinctive sociology collection across a broad range of specific subject areas, genres, and formats. Sociological fields frequently have intersections with global health, economics, demography, history, public policy, political science, education, gender studies, and ethnic studies. Some areas that will benefit from the expanded resources of a named collection might include medical sociology, comparative political sociology, global inequalities, entrepreneurship, technology and organizational environments, diversity and inclusions, and criminal justice.
