Developing an Academic Journal Collection for Gender Studies Scholarship

Collections at the University of Texas Libraries are designed to actively support scholarship on campus. One growing area of scholarship is Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS), LGBTQ Studies, and Sexualities Studies. These fields are interdisciplinary in nature and so the collections in these areas support many campus scholars. This project focused specifically on scholarly journals, developing a list of key titles in the field and using that data as a benchmark to evaluate the UT Libraries collection. It factored in multiple sources of data, including a national survey of WGS scholars, journal impact factors, bibliographies, and interlibrary borrowing requests originating at UT. The result was a complete picture of UT Libraries WGS journal collection that revealed a relatively comprehensive collection with room for growth in a few areas, specifically LGBTQ Studies.