The Harvard and Yale university library rowing collections: A checklist evaluation and semi-availability study

After reviewing the historical significance of competitive rowing at Harvard and Yale universities and the literature dealing with rowing as a competitive sport, this article describes and reports the results of a checklist evaluation and simulated semi-availability study of the rowing collections of the Harvard and Yale University library systems. The results indicate, contrary to what might be expected, that major academic libraries can have noteworthy holdings in a specialized sports area. Harvard has a stronger rowing collection with a higher overall availability rate than does Yale. Comparison with a previous evaluation of the Free Library of Philadelphia's (FLP) rowing collection, based on the identical checklist, indicated its holdings are a bit stronger than Harvard's and considerably better than Yale's, but not as strong as the combined holdings of both Harvard and Yale.