~  Learning Resources  ~
M.A. in Philosophy at IUPUI

General Resources

University Library

Current holdings within the libraries at IUPUI include over 1,338,889 volumes, more than 36,000 current periodicals and journals, over 1,197,000 microforms, and more than 152,400 government documents and audiovisual materials. The libraries’ holdings are accessed through a computer network linking Indiana University libraries statewide, and an interlibrary loan system makes available additional local, state and national academic library resources. The library provides many study and learning spaces, including hundreds of study carrels and group study rooms. The library is one of the most technologically sophisticated library/high technology centers on the North American continent. From its more than 300 scholar’s computer workstations, students can access academic reference and research tools, application software, course reserves, live news/educational television, videotapes, and the Internet.

From its inception, the philosophy department has had a focus on American philosophy, and courses in American philosophy have been taught with great regularity. Because of continued faculty and student interest, the University Library contains an extensive collection, built over many years, of books and professional journals in American philosophy. A parallel faculty and student interest has also led to an extensive collection in the University Library of books and journals relevant to bioethics.

The Main Research Library (Bloomington)

Students enrolled in the program will have access also to the Bloomington Libraries, which are considered to be among the leading libraries in the nation. They contain more than five million books and bound periodicals and seven million other materials. The east tower of the Main Library houses the Research Collections, which emphasizes the social sciences and the humanities, and includes several world-renowned collections. 

Resources in Bioethics

The University Medical Library

The medical library collection focuses on authoritative literature in biomedical research and clinical practice. The library contains more than 245,000 volumes, with current subscriptions to approximately 1900 journals. Materials not available at the Library can be requested from other institutions. The Document Delivery Service is available without charge to students. There are public workstations for searching MEDLINE and other databases on all three floors.

The Ruth Lilly Law Library

The Ruth Lilly Law Library is one of the largest legal research libraries in the United States, housing a collection of over 475,000 volumes. The library is one of the early United States government publications depositories and a full depository of the United Nations. The collection includes virtually complete holdings of federal statutory and case materials; attorney general reports and opinions; federal, regional, and state digests; all published state encyclopedias; bar association reports and proceedings; and the standard sets of encyclopedias, annotated cases, and citators. Extensive collections of legal periodicals, law and law-related treatises and textbooks, specialized law report sets, multi-volume practice sets, and jury instructions complement the primary holdings. The library is also a depository for records and briefs of the Indiana Supreme Court and the Indiana Court of Appeals.

Additional Bioethics Resources

The following additional resources will be immediately available for students who choose the concentration in bioethics: The Medical Library at Methodist Hospital and other hospital libraries, the IU Center for Bioethics library, Joseph and Matthew Payton Philanthropic Studies Library, and the library at the Poynter Center (Bloomington). In addition, students will have access to several seminars, visiting lecturers, study groups, listserv discussion groups, and collaborative research opportunities facilitated by the IU Center for Bioethics.

Resources in American Philosophy

Extensive additional resources are available for students who opt for the concentration in American philosophy. Even today, a steady stream of researchers from around the globe come to Indianapolis to access materials held at the Peirce Edition Project and the Santayana Edition. A full electronic inventory of these resources is currently in preparation with support from a 2001 IU Arts and Humanities Research Grant.

Max Fisch Library

This library is currently part of the Peirce Edition Project on the fifth floor of Cavanaugh Hall on the IUPUI campus. Over one hundred scholars from nineteen countries have visited the Max H. Fisch Library since 1993. At present, the library contains roughly twenty thousand books and well over three hundred linear feet of filing cabinet drawers filled with papers and items from the collections acquired by the Peirce Edition Project. The archives include correspondence, lectures, notes, articles, manuscripts, photographs, newspaper clippings, book reviews, grant applications, vinyl recordings, and other items. The major collections are the Peirce Collection, the Max H. Fisch Collection, the Carolyn Eisele Collection, and the Charles W. Morris Collection.

·      The Peirce Collection contains eighty linear feet of files. The collection includes photocopies of all known Peirce papers archived in libraries around the country, representing well over one hundred thousand manuscript pages. There are approximately twenty books with Peirce’s annotations in them, several artifacts from the US Coast Survey, and other personal items.

·      The Max H. Fisch Collection contains over one hundred and ten linear feet of files and papers. The latter include correspondence, lectures, notes, published articles, pamphlets, conference programs, newspaper clippings, and other items connected with his research. Fisch spent nearly forty years collecting research to write Peirce’s biography, a project he never finished. The collection includes a comprehensive reference catalog related to the life and work of Peirce, divided by subject, chronological year, and manuscript number in accordance with the Robin Catalog.

·      The Carolyn Eisele Collection contains over one hundred linear feet of papers. Carolyn Eisele (1902-2000) was a renowned mathematician, a historian of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century mathematics and science, and an expert on the life and work of Charles S. Peirce.

·      The Charles W. Morris Collection contains seventeen linear feet of papers. Charles Morris (1903-1979) was a student of George Herbert Mead. He edited much of Mead’s work, was involved in the Unity of Science Movement, and developed an original form of pragmatism. The collection includes, among other things, personal and professional correspondence, lecture notes of courses taken with Mead, unpublished papers, pamphlets, Morris’s Ph.D. dissertation, and copies of Peirce papers with Morris’s annotations.

·      Smaller collections include the David Savan papers and the Arthur W. Burks collection.

Santayana Edition Library

The Santayana Collection serves as a centralized library for students and scholars researching the life and works of George Santayana. The collection includes photocopies of original Santayana manuscripts and papers held by libraries around the country. In addition to the photocopies of Santayana’s manuscripts and papers, the Santayana Collection includes books published by Santayana, books published about Santayana, and translations of Santayana’s works. The Santayana Collection maintains an electronic database that includes scanned copies of Santayana’s books, articles, and letters. The database can be searched by topic or by keyword.

·      The John O. McCormick Collection contains copies of the marginalia from Santayana’s books with McCormick’s annotations, correspondence, notes, articles about Santayana, criticisms of Santayana, and receipts from McCormick’s Spain research trip. John Owen McCormick (1918-) is a comparative literature/Santayana scholar and author of George Santayana:  A Bibliography (Paragon House, 1987). McCormick’s papers have been organized both by theme and by year in Santayana’s life.

The Lilly Library (Bloomington)

The Lilly Library is one of the most famous rare book libraries in the world, holding in addition to 400,000 books more than 6 million manuscripts. The library contains several collections relevant to American philosophy, including the papers of Arthur Fisher Bentley (1870-1957), Nathan Hakman (1921-), Harry Allen Overstreet (1875-1970), and Ralph Barton Perry (1876-1957).