International Studies
Who we are
- Leadership: Barbara Alvarez
- Organization chart
- Staff directory for International Studies
What we do
The International Studies team consists of subject librarians, catalogers, and acquisitions specialists with diverse linguistic and cultural expertise. We build distinctive collections and provide support for research and teaching in various scholarly disciplines focused on regions across Africa, Asia (except China, Japan, and Korea, covered by Asia Library), Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Australia and the Pacific.
We acquire and process materials in a wide variety of formats, scripts and more than 200 languages. Many of us regularly travel to purchase materials and liaise with our suppliers.
We liaise with the International Institute and departments across campus to partner on research, teaching and learning.
Our subject specialists offer research consultations, instruction sessions, curate exhibits, and collaborate on digital scholarship projects.
Our skilled catalogers work in more than 56 languages and ensure that collection material is preserved and accessible for research.
We collaborate with other library partners on cooperative cataloguing, acquisitions, and reformatting projects for long-term preservation and access.
What we're working on
- We are engaged in metadata clean-up and migration of our library system to a new platform in July 2021.
- We contribute to the Library of Congress Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC-BIBCO & NACO), and the Big Ten Academic Alliance Cooperative Cataloging Partnership (BTAA-CCP).
- We work to identify and replace biased or insensitive subject headings in the library catalog.
- We participate in national discussions on the use of romanization in library catalogs within a linked data environment.
- We participate in the Center for Research Libraries’ Global Resources Programs.
- We supervise and mentor students participating in the Michigan Library Scholars program.