Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies

The Pauline P. Collins Latin American Collection

In the fall of 1996, the Latin American collection at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library was named the Pauline P. Collins Latin American Collection, in honor of Dr. Pauline P. Collins, Bibliographer for Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies at the University of Massachusetts from 1967 to 1996.  

According to local legend (which Pauline says is exaggerated), when she arrived 28 years before to work at the University, the Library's collections in Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American studies could fit on one shelf of Goodell Library. Working diligently throughout the intervening years, Pauline struggled to expand the library's resources in her areas, making the building of a research collection in Iberian languages her personal crusade. In even the leanest budget years of the University, Pauline managed to keep our links to Latin America and the Caribbean open. She established many exchanges with Latin American academic institutions, succeeded in obtaining books and journals from Cuba despite difficult restrictions, and expanded the range of Latin American government documents available in the collection.

Today the Pauline P. Collins Latin American Collection is the third largest collection in New England (after Harvard and Yale), and the largest in a public university library in the Northeast of the United States.  It consists of  200,000+ books, 700 journal subscriptions, and more than 40,000 microforms on Latin America. The Collection is particularly strong in Argentinean and Colombian materials, Spanish literature and linguistics, and has hundreds of reels of microfilm of documents from colonial Peru, the legacy of Dr. Lewis Hanke's tenure at the University.

Besides building a superb research collection, Pauline Collins also served as director of Latin American studies at the University of Massachusetts, taught as an adjunct professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, is a member of the board of advisors to the Handbook of Latin American Studies, and served as Executive Secretary of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) from 1973 to 1976. Pauline was elected an lifetime Honorary Member of SALALM in 1997.

The Latin American Collection Endowment enables the purchase of special formats, antiquaria, art books, and other exceptional materials for the Collection.

Any and all contributions are welcome. Since only the income from the Endowment is spent each year, gifts made to the Endowment's principle enable it to grow, adding to the amount each year which can be used for purchases of books and other materials.

Please help us to maintain this magnificent resource for all the people of the Commonwealth, and for the students and faculty at the University of Massachusetts and the Five Colleges who seek to learn more about the people and culture of Latin America.

If you would like to make a gift to the Latin American Collection Endowment, Isabel Espinal at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library.