Special Collections
The library has a number of special collections, including Colin Clarke’s Oaxaca Collection (see below) and our Institution and Private Collection Boxes, such as the Bevan Collection and material on CEDES and CELA.
In addition, the library has recently received a significant collection of documents relating to Colombian economic history which has been generously donated by Rosemary Thorp. The material is mostly twentieth century and covers a wide range of subjects such as coffee, transport and finance. We are in the process of organising this important and useful collection. If you would like to access this material, please ask at the Library Office.
Colin Clarke's Oaxaca Collection
Colin Clarke is an Emeritus Professor of Geography at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. In 2003, he gave his Mexican and Central American books to the Bodleian Latin American Centre Library. At the core of this donation was a specialist collection on the Mexican state of Oaxaca, dealing with its geography, history, demography, economic development, anthropology and archaeology.
This collection, purchased in Mexico and the UK, was put together between 1976 and 2000, when Oxford University Press published Professor Clarke's book Class, Ethnicity and Community in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca's Peasantries. The collection contains more than 500 books and journal offprints, bibliographies, gazetteers, typescripts and census materials. The census materials run from before the Mexican Revolution until 1990, and focus on population (though some agricultural, commercial and industrial data are included).
The collection would be indispensable for any humanities or social sciences researcher working on Oaxaca.