A recent USC News article featured the USC Libraries' Holocaust and Genocide Studies Collection, which in ten years has grown into "one of the largest standalone collections on the Holocaust and genocide of any university in the United States." Built in longstanding collaboration with Wolf Gruner, the founding director of USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research, the collection now boasts more than 18,000 books, archival collections, and other rare materials.
As the story by Rob Kuznia notes, Holocaust, genocide, and exile studies constitute one of the foci of the libraries' Collections Convergence Initiative:
In 2017, the USC Libraries system doubled down on its commitment to enlarging the collection. In what it called the Collections Convergence Initiative, it outlined three areas of expertise for USC: California and the American West; LGBTQ history and culture; and genocide studies. Gruner is the faculty liaison for the genocide field. The library system has since added two more areas: East Asian history and music.
“The Collections Convergence Initiative connects library curators with communities of scholarship to advance research and creative practice, particularly through the use of primary sources,” said Catherine Quinlan, USC Libraries dean. “Holocaust, genocide and exile studies are essential subjects of research and teaching at USC.”
To ensure the collection is current, the university purchases every new book in English and German on the Holocaust every year, growing by as many as 1,000 books annually.