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School of Philosophy and Bioethics

1. The School

The 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 statement

The 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 collection

a. Location

Material 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. Language

Material 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 used

The 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 resources

The 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 :

  • Humanities Abstracts
  • MLA
  • PAIS
  • Sociofile
  • APAIS
  • ERIC
  • Philosophers Index and
  • Medline

Fulltext databases / electronic journal suites :

  • Expanded Academic ASAP (over 1,500 titles, of which approximately 520 are in fulltext)
  • Project MUSE (over 200 journals)
  • Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • LegalTrac (approximately 1,950 journals of which 222 are in fulltext) and
  • Elibrary (online reference library).

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 collection

The 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

100
101
110
111
111.85
113
120
140-149
142
160
170
174.2
180-190
180
181
182-188
189
190
210
320
370
401
501
Philosophy
Theory of philosophy
Metaphysics
Ontology
Aesthetics
Philosophy of nature
Epistemology
Specific philosophic schools
Critical philosophy
Logic
Ethics
Medical ethics
Philosophers
Ancient philosophers
Eastern philosophers
Ancient western philosophers
Medieval western philosophers
Modern philosophers
Philosophy of religion
Political philosophy
Educational philosophy
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of science

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

155.232
170
171
172-179
173
174
174.2
174.957
176
179
179.1
179.3
179.7
179.76
179.9
205
205.649
241.649
342.084
344.041
362.196
363.46
660.6
Moral psychology
Ethics (including morality)
Ethical systems
Ethical problems
Ethics of family relationships
Professional ethics
Occupational ethics medical professions
Bioethics
Ethics reproduction
Ethical norms
Respect for life and nature
Treatment of animals
Euthanasia
Abortion ethics
Virtues
Ethics
Bioethics Religion
Bioethics religion Christianity
Abortion law
Euthanasia Law
Genetic screening
Abortion
Biotechnology

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 resources

Philosophy

Microform collection : The Wittgenstein papers (21 reels)

DDC Description Caulfield Matheson Law HAL Gippsland Berwick
PHILOSOPHY            
101 Theory of philosophy - R     - -
110 Metaphysics T R     - -
111.85 Aesthetics - R     T -
121 Epistemology T R     - -
140-149 Specific philosophical schools - R     - -
160 Logic T R     - -
170 Ethics T R     T T
174.2 Medical ethics T R   R T T
180-199 Historical, geographic treatment of philosophy T R     T -
401 Language philosophy and theory T R   T T T
501 Philosophy of science T R   R T T
HUMAN BIOETHICS            
155.232 Moral psychology - R     - -
170 Ethics (inc. morality) T R     T T
171 Ethical systems - T     - -
173 Ethics of family relationships - T     - -
174 Professional ethics T T   R T -
174.2 Medical ethics T R   R T T
176 Ethics of sex and reproduction - T     - -
179 Other ethical norms T T     - T
179.1 Respect for life and nature - T     - -
179.3 Treatment of animals - T     - -
179.9 Virtues - R     - -

Amendment history:
First issued December 2000
Amended : June 2006, October 2008

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