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School of Philosophy and Bioethics1. The SchoolThe School of Philosophy and Bioethics consists of two departments – the Department of Philosophy and the Centre for Human Bioethics. The School has a student load of 178 EFTSU, of which approximately 19 are postgraduate. There are 18 (FTE) teaching staff in the school. Department of Philosophy : A major, honours and postgraduate studies are available on the Clayton campus, with more limited offerings on the Caulfield and Gippsland campuses. The department's research strengths lie in the area of analytic philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition, but it is also strong in recent European thought, feminism and the history of ideas. Centre for Human Bioethics : The Centre offers PhD and masters by research degrees. It also offers masters by coursework and post-graduate diplomas. Research strengths include ethical issues in patient care, especially involving autonomy and confidentiality; the ethics of clinical trials; ethical problems of resources allocation; medical end-of-life decisions; new reproductive technologies; nursing ethics; surrogacy; disability and discrimination; the new genetics and ethics; moral psychology and moral development; and professional ethics and moral psychology of professional roles. The Centre is also strong in ethical theory, especially virtue ethics and consequentialism, the relevance of emotions to ethics, partiality and impartiality in ethics, and feminist ethics. 2. General policy statementThe Collection Development Policy covers printed books and journals, electronic resources, multimedia and any other formats acquired for the Library's collection. The Policy is regularly monitored to ensure that the selection and acquisition of new resources supports the teaching and research needs of the faculties and their departments. While every effort is made to meet known information needs some gaps in the collection may develop which need attention, and suggestions to address them are welcome. This may be done through liaison with library staff or, for individual titles, using the recommendation form at lib.monash.edu.au/forms/acquisition-request.doc To ensure that the library provides collection materials to support new courses and subjects, completion of a Library Impact Statement lib.monash.edu.au/forms/impact.doc is required. When establishing new research directions staff are encouraged to liaise with the library about the provision of supporting information resources. All titles listed as prescribed or recommended reading for teaching subjects are acquired as high priority and in multiple copies depending on student enrolment numbers. This is particularly necessary for undergraduate students, who need access to adequate resources on their home campus. Electronic versions of these texts are also provided where possible, so that access is more readily available regardless of location and number of copies held. The inter-campus loan and photocopy services for undergraduates further support the needs of those students. However, the library cannot acquire every item that could conceivably be needed by Monash staff or students. The reciprocal borrowing scheme enables Monash library users to borrow from other university libraries. Post-graduates and staff may also use the document delivery service to obtain books and articles from other libraries in Australia and overseas. 3. The Library's collectiona. LocationMaterial purchased for the School of Philosophy and Bioethics is predominantly located in the Matheson Library on the Clayton campus. Audiovisual material is kept in the Music and Multimedia Library. Some material on Philosophy is purchased for the Caulfield and Gippsland campus libraries. Significant amounts of material on bioethics are also purchased by departments of the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Medicine, and these are located in the Hargrave-Andrew Library on the Clayton campus. The Law Library holds significant material relating to ethics and bioethics. Material on professional ethics is also acquired for the departments of the Faculty of Business and Economics. Philosophy of science materials are acquired by departments of the Faculty of Science and these are held predominantly in the Hargrave-Andrew Library, with a smaller collection on the Gippsland campus. b. LanguageMaterial is acquired for the School of Philosophy and Bioethics mainly in the English language, but some foreign language material is purchased, mainly in French and German. c. Classification usedThe Library's collections relevant to the School of Philosophy and Bioethics are classified using the Dewey Decimal Classification. d. Formats.No format is excluded, although in practice the majority of the collection is monographs or serials, both print and electronic. e. Size of the collection.Number of print serial titles received : approx. 190 The ten-volume Routledge encyclopedia of Philosophy is available in print and CD-ROM formats at the Matheson Library as well as being available to all staff and students via the Internet. The Matheson and Hargrave-Andrew libraries have significant holdings of important print indexes such as ISIS: Cumulative Bibliography: a Bibliography of the History of Science, The International Philosophical Bibliography, Abstracts in Anthropology and Bibliography of Bioethics. f. Significant electronic resourcesThe Library is purchasing increased numbers of resources in electronic format, including networked or internet databases, fulltext resources including suites of electronic journals, and CD-ROM databases that are only accessible within a particular Branch library. As a result, an increasing proportion of the budget for library material for the Faculty of Arts is spent on these resources. These include Indexing and abstracting services :
Fulltext databases / electronic journal suites :
Online subject guides : Approximately 24% of the library materials budget for the Faculty of Arts is spent on serials, and 14% on electronic resources. g. Coverage of the collectionThe library resources acquired for the School cover in general those areas of the Dewey Decimal Classification relating to philosophy and ethics the 100s, Ethics in 200s, 300s when related to sociological topics, and 660 for biotechnology. The main areas of collecting for Philosophy are detailed below
There is a large collection of material on a wide range of philosophical areas of study and philosophers, including foreign language books and journals. The collection supports both undergraduate teaching and independent research at the postgraduate level. There are significant collections in analytic philosophy, ethics, feminist theory, history of ideas, philosophy of language, philosophy of science and other areas of study. The collection to support teaching in Philosophy on the Caulfield campus is estimated at 2,367 volumes. The main areas of collecting for Human Bioethics are detailed below
Monash University Library has very strong holdings in Medical Ethics which may be available in either Matheson or Hargrave- Andrew Libraries. The Matheson library is building up a stronger collection in Professional ethics, particularly in Business, Law and Medicine. It will be less actively adding to its existing strong collection of animal rights material 4. Other significant Monash collections or resourcesPhilosophyMicroform collection : The Wittgenstein papers (21 reels)
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