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OSU Libraries

The OSU Libraries enhance and support the university's instructional and research programs with traditional and innovative services and collections. Comprised of The Valley Library, University Archives, the Marilyn Potts Guin Library at the Mark O. Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon, and the OSU Cascades Campus co-located at Central Oregon Community College in Bend, Oregon, the OSU Libraries are dedicated to serving the students, faculty, and staff at Oregon State University.

The Valley Library, in the center of campus, offers an environment conducive to individual study and collaborative work. Group study rooms, quiet reading areas, and both wireless and networked connections for laptop computers are featured. Library users can access hundreds of research databases and thousands of online journals from workstations in the Learning Commons on the library's main floor, and from anywhere outside the library through the online service. OSU faculty and students can also access the majority of these resources throughout the OSU campus and from any off-campus computer. The workstations include office applications software and e-mail access. Adjacent to the Learning Commons, is the Collaborative Learning Center, which provides tutoring and one-on-one assistance by Campus Career Services, the Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Math departments, the Writing Center and the library. A notable collection of contemporary Northwest artwork is on display throughout the library.

OSU Libraries has nearly 2 million volumes. We add approximately 20,000 monographs annually and purchase approximately 34,000 current serials. Recognizing the desire of students and faculty to have 24 hours a day/7 days a week access to information, the libraries is rapidly shifting from a print collection to a digital one. As of 2009, the libraries provided access to more than 250 databases and 71,972 unique electronic journal titles. This increase in coverage corresponds with an increase in usage. In 2005, there were 1,852,533 searches performed in 113 databases. In 2009, usage increased to 4,083,486 searches in 225 databases. In addition to database and e-journals, the libraries continue to add electronic books to the collection. In 2005 the number of e-books was 2,986. By 2009 the number was at 20,547 and trends support an increase in 2010. As students and faculty become more comfortable with e-books, their use increases. In 2000 over 20,547 electronic books were downloaded. These resources may be accessed remotely through the OSU Libraries home page at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/.

OSU Libraries is a member of the Orbis/Cascades Alliance, http://www.orbiscascade.org/, which includes 36 Washington and Oregon universities, colleges and community colleges with total holdings of 9.2 million titles. Membership in the Alliance not only expands access to information but also provides OSU Libraries with significant ability to leverage is collection dollars, participate in innovative programs and offer library faculty and staff developmental opportunities. Membership in the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA, http://www.gwla.org/ ) in addition to enabling us to leverage buying power, provides opportunities to increase our digital presence through such sites as the Western Waters Digital Library, http://www.westernwaters.org/. GWLA, a consortium of 32 research libraries from 17 Midwestern and Western states, also enhances our services and programs related to interlibrary loan and scholarly communication. As libraries move away from ownership to access membership in consortia becomes a critical factor in giving our faculty and students a wide variety of information in a timely and efficient manner. Finally, consortia membership gives us the ability to provide in-depth support to those programs that are important to the university but are not within the three signature areas.

The libraries have described, organized, and digitized thousands documents, photographs, maps and data to make them more widely accessible for researchers, students, and the general public. The University Archives, housed on the third floor, maintains extensive records, manuscripts and photographs pertaining to the history of OSU. Special Collections, on the fifth floor, houses a number of archival and book collections, most of which focus on the history of twentieth-century science and technology; its primary mission is to preserve and provide access to the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers.

OSU Libraries supports faculty and student research not only through its purchased collection but also through its extensive digital program. Significant among them, are the Linus Pauling websites from the Special Collection Department.

The Library participates in the Orbis-Cascade Alliance, a consortium of northwestern academic libraries, for borrowing material not available in OSU Libraries.

OSU Libraries is also engaged in a series of collaborative efforts with the University of Oregon Libraries which range from making joint decision on collections, expanding access to each libraries' collections, sharing software, providing joint faculty/staff development opportunities and in general viewing the two libraries as a single library with shared purposes.

OSU Libraries partners with the Institute for Natural Resources on the Oregon Explorer; a natural resources digital library, http://oregonexplorer.info/. Collaboration spreads beyond the two departments to include state agencies and other public/private partnerships.

Each of these collaborations adds to the amount and value of resources the OSU Libraries can make available to our users as well as raising the profile of the libraries state-wide and nationally.

OSU Libraries extends its services and resources to the campus and off campus community in a variety of ways. Our collections can be accessed online and through mobile devices. Library hours are being extended 24 hours/5 days a week through a pilot project allowing OSU students and faculty access to collections as well as computers. The library is in the process of upgrading its wireless access throughout the building. Finally, as we move away from print collections to electronic ones, we are repurposing space to increase collaborative study areas.

OSU Libraries has two off site branches. The Marilyn Potts Guin Library in Newport houses the research and teaching collection of Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center. The collection of over 35,000 books and journals covers a broad range of marine-related topics including fisheries, aquaculture, oceanography, geology, environmental studies and biology. Particular attention is paid to collecting material on marine fisheries, marine mammals, and information specific to the Northeast Pacific Ocean. The OSU Cascades Library provides library services to OSU students, faculty, and staff in Bend, Oregon through shared facilities on the Central Oregon Community College campus.

In a unique partnership with the COCC library, the OSU Libraries offers innovative services to its upper division and graduate students on the OSU-Cascades campus. To find more about library services on Cascades campus see http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/cascades/.

The Cascades Library in Bend supports OSU general upper division programs including tourism and outdoor leadership and graduate programs in education. This is a relatively new program which relies on the Cascades librarians sharing the space and collections of the Central Oregon Community College to deliver services.

Since June 2007, the OSU Press has been a department of the OSU Libraries. The press supports the OSU Strategic Plan through its publication of scholarly and general interest books in the forestry, natural resources management and natural history.

For help identifying and locating library materials and other research assistance, ask at the Reference Desk in the Learning Commons, send an e-mail to valley.reference@oregonstate.edu or chat online using instant messaging http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/reference/. Students may also make an appointment with a librarian for assistance with library research and class assignments. Librarians are listed at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/staff/sublist.html.

To keep informed about new resources and services the OSU Libraries offers, visit http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/ or stop by one of the service desks where members of the library staff are always ready to help.