Because of its interdisciplinary nature, the size of the women's studies collection is difficult to assess. Levels of collecting are incorporated within the policies of specific disciplines.
Many bibliographers participate in developing the collection in the course of their work.
The collection contains a wealth of relevant published material in the fields of anthropology, education, folklore, literature, political science, social work, and sociology, with a growing component in sexuality. The library holds several relevant microform collections including British Birth Control Ephemera in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries , Herstory , Mary McLeod Bethune Papers , Witchcraft in Europe and America . The Penn Library Web provides access to two complementary licensed networked online fulltext databases relevant to women's studies, Contemporary Women's Issues and GenderWatch . Studies on Women Abstracts , Women Studies Abstracts , and Women's Studies Index , and through free online databases linked from the Penn Library Web. Although the majority of the collection is in English, other languages are represented as well.