There is considerably greater depth in museology than at McGill. Department of Indian and Northern Affairs , Ottawa, owns the most complete collection of documents pertaining to the contemporary social, political and legal issues of Canadian native peoples. The library also has significant sections of the Records of the U.S. Land Claims Commission. Consortia and Document Delivery Center For Research Libraries in Chicago, a consortium to which McGill belongs, includes some remarkable material, e.g. the professional correspondence of Franz Boas on microfilm, selections of the colonial reports of France and Great Britain which often contain valuable ethnohistorical material, a mss collection of various cultural anthropological field reports, some microfilmed sets of U.S. National Archives dealing with North American native peoples including the Records of the U.S. Land Claims Commission. Research Libraries Group and OCLC memberships provide access to vast bibliographic databases and to efficient document delivery systems based on the holdings of North America's most eminent research collections.
Some Spanish material relating to Latin America is purchased.
From prehistory to the present. Whenever possible, retrospective acquisitions are made to upgrade specific areas of the collection and to supply replacements of important books which have deteriorated or disappeared. The collection is routinely surveyed and evaluated as reprinted monograph and journal titles become available. Subjects and Levels of Collecting Definitions of levels are from the American Library Association's Guide for Written Collection Policy Statements , 1989. Notes concerning pertinent Library of Congress call numbers follow the text of this policy statement.