SMU Libraries
www.smu.edu/libraries
SMU Libraries are one of the greatest assets of the University, and comprise the largest private research library system in Texas, ranking third in the state with over four million volumes. Support for research and teaching for SMU students, faculty and staff is the primary goal of all libraries at SMU. The University’s library system is comprised of six libraries on the main campus and one library in Taos, NM.
- Fondren Library
- Hamon Arts Library
- DeGolyer Library
- Underwood Law Library
- Bridwell Library
- Business Library
- Fort Burgwin Library
Fondren Library
Fondren Library is the main library on campus and serves students, faculty and staff in the areas of humanities, social sciences, business, education, science, and engineering, with over three million print and online resources. Subject librarians assigned to each discipline offer personal research services to students and faculty to support teaching and learning. Subject librarians collaborate with faculty to integrate information literacy concepts into university curriculum to support the academic mission of the university. Within Fondren Library, students have access to 1,000 seats of study space, including bookable study rooms and conference rooms with supportive learning technology. The Caren Prothro Learning Commons and nearby Collaborative Commons provide both individual and collaborative group spaces conducive to creative work, as well as a Starbucks café and the IT Help Desk to provide technical assistance to the University community. For quiet study, the Fondren Foundation Centennial Reading Room is a beautiful setting with vaulted ceilings and handmade wooden tables with reading lamps in a large sunlit space. The bold visual impact of this iconic reading room epitomizes the discovery, inspiration and community for which SMU is known. In addition to physical spaces, Fondren Library also manages the SMU Digital Repository, called SMU Scholar, which houses the scholarly output of the SMU faculty and graduate students. To support the research of the university, Fondren Library provides document delivery, as well as access to holdings from other libraries via interlibrary loan. Strengths of the Fondren Library collections include, classical studies, late 18th- and early 19th-century English literature, American history, Texas history, contemporary biography and literature, anthropology, political science, economics and other social sciences.
The Norwick Center for Digital Solutions (nCDS), located in Fondren Library, focuses on digitizing collections of rare photographs, manuscripts, imprints, art work, film, musical recordings, and other unique items for increased access via the Digital Collections website. nCDS serves as a teaching lab, with digital collections development and Digital Humanities practicums available to students.
Hamon Arts Library
The Hamon Arts Library, adjoining the south side of the Owen Arts Center of the Meadows School of the Arts, provides resources for the study of art history, communications, dance, film, music, theatre and visual art. With nearly 250,000 volumes of books, sound recordings and video recordings, the library’s collections support the Meadows curriculum and are particularly strong in European and American arts. The library also provides conference room facilities; group audio-visual study and presentation rooms; and public computers for research, study and arts-specific software projects. Two special collections units are administered by Hamon Arts Library:
The Jerry Bywaters Special Collections focus on the cultural history of the American Southwest. Visual arts holdings include archival materials and works of art on paper documenting the careers of artists such as Jerry Bywaters, Otis and Velma Davis Dozier, E.G. Eisenlohr, Octavio Medellin, Olin Travis and Janet Turner as well as correspondence of 19th-century French painter Rosa Bonheur. Performing arts holdings include two Japanese gigaku masks dating from the 7th to the 10th centuries, the papers of Oscar-winning actress Greer Garson, and materials documenting the careers of longtime SMU music faculty members Paul van Katwijk and Lloyd Pfautsch.
The G. William Jones Film and Video Collection, founded in 1970, holds more than 10,000 films and videos on a wide array of subjects, in all types of formats. The Jones Collection is best known for its Tyler, Texas, Black Film Collection, WFAA newsreel collection, and for the Sulphur Springs Collection of pre-nickelodeon films.
DeGoyler Library
DeGolyer Library is a noncirculating special collections library that contains more than 170,000 volumes. In addition to rare books, the DeGoyler Library holds nearly 2,500 separate manuscript collections, nearly 1.5 million photographs and negatives, 2,000 newspaper and periodical titles, 3,000 maps, and an extensive collection of printed ephemera. Subject strengths include the American West, Mexico, railroad history, business history, and the history of science and technology.
The University Archives, part of the DeGolyer Library, are the official repository for SMU administrative and historical records of the University. The archives contain manuscripts, photographs, publications, records, and artifacts documenting the establishment and growth of the University. SMU administrators, faculty, local historians and media representatives are its principal users, but students and visiting scholars often use its materials for a variety of research projects.
Underwood Law Library
Underwood Law Library is the largest private academic law library west of the Mississippi River. Its collections include approximately 673,361 law-related volumes and equivalents, ranking the library among the top 20% of law libraries in the United States. The library’s building is the fifth largest academic law library in the country. Underwood Law Library subscribes to hundreds of databases, including Lexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg BNA, Bloomberg Law, HeinOnline, ProQuest Congressional, Checkpoint, Making of Modern Law, and Tax Analysts. The subject area strengths of the Underwood Law Library’s collections correspond to the Law School’s curricular strengths: taxation, securities, corporate law, air and space law, commercial and banking law, constitutional law, law and medicine, and international law. The library’s collection of antiquarian law books, including the McKnight Antiquarian Book Collection, is one of the leading collections of its kind in the country, with volumes printed as early as 1473.
Bridwell Library
Bridwell Library, primarily serving the faculty and students of the Perkins School of Theology, is the University’s principal research resource for the fields of theology and religious studies. It offers a print collection of nearly 400,000 volumes and 1,350 current periodical titles, and it provides access to a wide array of digital books, journals and databases. Among the library’s special collections are significant holdings in early printing, English and American Methodism, theology, religion, and the book arts. The interpretation of these collections is accomplished through class instruction, lectures, publications and exhibitions. Reference librarians are available to help students discover and use the many resources of Bridwell Library.
Business Library
The Business Library of the Cox School of Business is located in room 150 of the Maguire Building. This library is open to all students regardless of major. The mission of the library is to provide the SMU community with authoritative business information, regardless of format; support the integration of information and technology into the curriculum; and act as a center for research and development for state-of-the-art information technology applications in the business education field. In support of this mission, students, faculty and staff have access to course-specific in-class instruction sessions, open enrollment research workshops and reference assistance from dedicated business librarians to enhance their use of current business news and financial, industry and market data from premier providers. The Business Library includes the Kitt Investing and Trading Center, quiet and group study areas, 70 computer workstations in individual and group areas, a multimedia studio, a group presentation practice room, a periodicals area, facility wide wireless access, more than 400 electronic resources, and a variety of print resources, including the Hillcrest Foundation International Resource Library, the Edwin L. Cox Business Leadership Center Resource Collection, the Maguire Energy Institute Resource Collection and the Cox Career Services Collection. Librarians are available all hours that the business library is open, providing research assistance in person and virtually via email and telephone.
Fort Burgwin Library
The Fort Burgwin Library, located in Taos, New Mexico, serves students and faculty in the SMU-in-Taos program. It is focused on the history, literature, cultures and environment of New Mexico and the Southwest. The library, constructed in 2004, contains approximately 9,000 books and a small collection of journals and maps, and houses the Fred Wendorf Information Commons and a computer lab.
The University provides laboratories and equipment for courses in accounting, advertising, anthropology, art, biology, chemistry, chemistry, communication studies, creative computation, languages, Earth sciences, film and media studies, journalism, psychology, physics, health and physical education, dance, music, theatre, and statistics, as well as civil, computer, electrical, environmental and mechanical engineering. The University is also home to a number of centers and institutes.
Museum
The Meadows Museum, founded by the late philanthropist Algur H. Meadows and located at 5900 Bishop Boulevard, houses one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art in the world, as well as selected masterpieces of modern European sculpture, from Rodin and Maillol to David Smith and Claes Oldenburg. The holdings of the museum number more than 3,500 objects including paintings, sculpture, decorative arts and works on paper from the Middle Ages to the present. Artists represented include El Greco, Velázquez, Ribera, Zurbarán, Murillo, Goya, Picasso, Dalí, and Miró. The Meadows Museum hosts a regular program of loan exhibitions each year in its temporary exhibition galleries and sponsors an active program of public lectures, tours, films, concerts and symposia, as well as children’s art programs and family days throughout the year. Museum collections are often used by SMU faculty in their courses. The museum membership program includes exhibition previews, tours of private collections and opportunities for travel. Docent tours of the collection are available to school, University and adult groups. The Meadows Museum, in addition to its collection, houses a museum shop and special event rooms. Additional information is available at www.meadowsmuseumdallas.org.
Office of Information Technology
The Office of Information Technology provides computing, information processing, and communications resources to satisfy the needs of faculty, students, and staff. These services include an SMU email account, access to enrollment and financial data online, Internet access, telephone services, Web-based services, technical support, and a variety of software and hardware discounts.
SMU offers high-speed network connections throughout campus. Students can take advantage of both wired and wireless connections throughout all areas of the residence halls. Wireless coverage also extends throughout the campus in classrooms, libraries, common areas, and several outdoor locations. In addition to on-campus Internet connections, OIT provides off-campus access to resources via a virtual private network connection and access to other research institutions Wi-Fi networks through eduroam.
All students receive an SMU email account, which will remain active after graduation. The email account may be accessed online via Office 365 (office365.smu.edu). Students also have access to a variety of Web-based services such as my.SMU, personal blog space (people.smu.edu), unlimited cloud storage space (smu.edu/box), and the Canvas Learning Management System (smu.edu/canvas). Academic information, including grade history, financial information, and class registration, is available through the my.SMU system.
OIT also provides complimentary on-campus IT support. Located in Fondren Library West, the IT Help Desk provides technical assistance for most computing issues Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Fridays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturdays from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. during the regular semester. Times will vary for breaks and summer. The IT Help Desk provides support via phone or in-house for a wide variety of technical questions related to networking, software installs, and the use of SMU IT resources. The OIT website (smu.edu/oit) provides information, step-by-step instructions, and answers to many frequently asked questions. Training On-Demand is also available through lyndaCampus (smu.edu/lynda) for additional software.
Although most students have a personal laptop, SMU provides a number of public computer labs. Typically, the labs contain both Mac and PC workstations and support a variety of applications. Printing is also available through our PaperCut Pay-for-Print System (smu.edu/printing). If needing to purchase a personal copy of the software, discounts on software and computer hardware purchases are available throughout the year. More information can be found on the OIT website at smu.edu/oit.
For additional information on services provided by OIT, students should visit www.smu.edu/oit or call the IT Help Desk (214-768-HELP or 214-768-4357). SMU related technology news and updates are available on Twitter (@smuoit) and the IT Connect blog (blog.smu.edu/itconnect).
|