Cohousing-L Mailing List: Publications about cohousing

[Fred H. Olson (fholson]

Last fall I developed a list of 65 publications on cohousing listed in the
"Worldcat" library database which is available to library card holders at
the Hennepin County (Minnesota) Library Catalog site at
telnet://hennepin.lib.mn.us/ .  I presume it is available elsewhere tho I
do not know where. The database includes names of libraries that hold each
document which could be used to access them by inter-library loan.

The data is copyrighted so I'm unsure how much of the list I developed
could be shared without violating the copyright.  (Advice of librarians or
others on this list welcome.) The software I used to access the database
does not generate a useable list easily - it's very interactive and single
document oriented so lots of keystrokes are required and the output
includes a lot of redundancy etc.  Even after the massaging of the
captured data that I have done it is still a large document - over 100 K
bytes.  

For these reasons I pondered what I could post here about my findings and
before I posted anything it got set aside. It came back to mind today so I
am posting this summary.

About my findings.

Articles in periodicals are not included in this database (a few
periodicals about cohousing are listed). The widely held publications are
mostly the ones with which we are familiar. ( I went and looked on
www.cohousing.org for a list of books about cohousing and could not find
anything - I did not check the cohousing-L archives. There's a little
project for someone.)  McCammant and Durret's _Cohousing_ was by far the
most widely held publication.  Several others (e.g. Chris ScottHansen's)
book were not in nearly as many libraries as would be desireable.

The most interesting thing is the large number of academic theses listed.  
The thesis about cohousing (on www.cohousing.org ) that I refer to
frequently by Donna Spreitzer U C Davis is not listed so I wonder how
complete this data is.

Below is a summary of theses that are listed:
 
43 Academic theses out of 66 records:
30 in Architecture
13 in other fields
 
2 PHd
3 B Arch
1 senior honors
37 Masters level

Frequently mentioned institutions: 
10 CA (7 UC, Berkeley)
 4 U Wash
 3 IA State (my alma mater! & no cohousing in Iowa)

Generally the only library that holds a thesis is the one at
the institution at which it was written.

Fred

--
URL below corrected 1/7/00    sorry.   Some WTO details there.

Fred H. Olson  fholson [at] cohousing.org    Minneapolis,MN   55411
(612)588-9532  Amateur radio: WB0YQM          List manager of:
Cohousing-L and Nbhd-tc (Twin Cities Neighborhood issues list)
More info:   http://www.mtn.org/~fholson/sig-detail.htm