Original posting is in the archives:
http://www.infomotions.com/serials/colldv-
l/archive/2007/200701/0017.html
==#3==
Hello,
Growing weary of casual and not so casual comments from conservatives
regarding our large periodicals collection at the University of
Washington
(Seattle) and its alleged leftist orientation, I decided to see if it
was
true (which, frankly, I suspected it was). Much to my surprise, after
going through most of the currently received paper copy subscriptions
to
political magazines, research journals, quarterlies, etc., I
discovered
that, roughly speaking, "Conservative" and "Liberal" journals were
within
two or three titles of each other, with liberal titles outnumbering
conservative titles---hardly a gross imbalance.
I've forgotten the total number of titles reviewed, but somewhere in
the
neighborhood of 25 or 30 titles of publications self-described as
"Conservative" or "Liberal." These journals are only a subset of a
much
larger, diverse collection, ranging from Communist journals to the
Libertarian Party official publication, etc.
I looked again at this balance question a couple of years ago and
found
that a slight shift had occured with Conservative print titles
outnumbering the Liberal publications by two.
We originally pulled all of this info together in a web page designed
to
help students find different perspectives on political issues. The
page
is called, rather unoriginally, "Opposing Views." Of course, it
includes
a large number of political web sites too, which now far outweigh the
periodical titles we still receive in paper. And the aggragated
journals
databases also open up a universe of various politically oriented
sources.
Our web page is again in need of updating, but it is still useful in
academic reference work.
Glenda Pearson
Suzzallo Allen Library
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington 98195
Received on Sun Jan 28 2007 - 06:53:54 EST