The Barbara A. Holland Collection for Service Learning and Community Engagement (SLCE) is both uniquely retrospective and comprehensive, offering the world's largest physical collection in the field.
UNO is the custodian of more than 10,000 volumes of scholarly work on service-learning and community engagement. The collection is located in the UNO Dr. C. C. and Mabel L. Criss Library.
The collection namesake, Barbara Holland, helped coordinate the transfer of the entire physical library collection of the former Learn and Serve America National Service-Learning Clearinghouse (NSLC), of which she is a former president. Holland is an internationally recognized expert on community engagement scholarship with academic affiliations at Portland State University, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of Sydney (Australia).
“UNO is an exemplary engaged university that will make an ideal home for the world’s only special library collection dedicated to service-learning and community engagement,” Holland said. “The University’s commitment to the collection and its future will ensure its value and accessibility to researchers. UNO’s accessible location and commitment to building the collection further will be an invaluable asset for the advancement of the field.”
The collection is available to the UNO campus as well as university and community building partner organizations housed in the Barbara Weitz Community Engagement Center. Additionally, the collection is accessible worldwide through interlibrary loan programs and, eventually, through online access. Researchers and practitioners can also visit the collection to study the works in person.