Library
The ISA Library and its staff moved into the Senate House Library in August 2009. The Americas Library has now been reclassified according to the Library of Congress classification scheme and integrated with the Senate House Latin American and Caribbean Studies collection to create a new ULRLS (University of London Research Library Services) Latin American and Caribbean Studies Collection which combines the holdings and strengths of both the ISA and SHL collections to provide over 90,000+ volumes of research level material.
The combined holdings cover most aspects of Latin America and the Caribbean, the geographical area covered including all the territories of Central and South America as well as the islands of the Caribbean (including the English-, Dutch- and French-speaking communities), the islands of the South Atlantic (the Falklands/Malvinas and South Georgia), the Galapagos Islands and the Antarctic territories administered by Chile and Argentina.
The collection maintains the strengths of the ISA Library (founded in 1965) together with those of the Senate House collection, which was formed as one of the designated centres of excellence resulting from the Report of the Parry Committee of the University Grants Committee on Latin American Studies (1965). The strengths of the combined collections lie in their emphasis on material in the humanities and related social sciences: history, politics, economics, anthropology, sociology, gender studies combined with an emphasis on literature and areas such as film and documentaries from or on Latin American and the Caribbean.
Much of the material is unique and has been sourced directly from the countries of origin. There is therefore a high proportion of non-English language material: Spanish, Portuguese and French.
