Information available to students at the IWP library is wide-ranging and ever-evolving to keep up with current topics of interest to IWP students.
With over 38,000 volumes, the library has added 2,000 carefully curated new books in the past year. Many of these books were donated by alumni, former professors, and friends of the Institute. Others come from the “Surplus Books Program,” a program through which the Library of Congress donates books to eligible organizations.
In addition to the books on cyber security, terrorism, diplomacy, ISIS, economic warfare, and intelligence, the library contains rare and out-of-print national security books and documents.
There is also a plethora of information on over 15 different electronic databases that is available online to students. These databases include JSTOR, ProQuest, EBSCO, Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO), and LexisNexis. This year, the library will be adding several new databases, including BRILL, a scholarly database for books and journals which concentrate on intelligence.
Although many book are donated to the library, the Institute purchases books on current topics, such as Ukraine, Russia, and ISIS. Some recent purchases include, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror by former NSA Director General Michael V. Hayden, Islamist Terrorism in Europe by Peter Nesser, and Ukraine: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It by Anders Aslund.
The IWP library also offers the “Georgetown University Library Borrowing Privileges,” where students have access to the entire Georgetown University Library for $25 dollars a semester. Dmitry Kulik, Library Manager at IWP explains, “This is a great resource for IWP students. There are 7 entire floors of books at the GU Library, and they carry books we do not have here at our library.”
The Institute of World Politics has introduced the “Friends of the Library” program. This program allows alumni or former students to access books at the library for an annual fee.
With limited space and expanding collections, the next step for the IWP library will be to acquire high density mobile storage systems. These movable and collapsible shelving units would allow double the storage capacity in the library.