ABSTRACT
In 1986 an informal group of literature specialists within the Research Library Group surveyed 36 American research libraries on their collecting of foreign translations of American literature. The despised genres such as children’s literature or suspense novels present research problems of considerable interest to translation studies, and one might also include what is derogatively termed paraliterature: travel accounts, movie scripts and songs. Chronological limits could be applied either to the target or the source culture, depending on what is being documented. Libraries which have collected translations at all have usually focused on the canonical texts of the source culture. But for the program of descriptive translation studies there is no reason why a noncanonical author, a nonliterary text, or an inferior translation should not present interesting research problems. Few libraries, of course, would have resources enough to tackle a whole language or country, but this focus combines easily with others to yield practical collecting programs.
