WWU Libraries
Librarians, library staff, and student assistants seek to inspire excellence in thought by bringing people and information together in innovative ways at the WWU Libraries including the main Peterson Memorial Library on the College Place campus, the School of Nursing Library on the Portland campus, and the MSW focused libraries on the Billings and Missoula campuses. On each campus, librarians and/or other professional staff are available to facilitate student success through reference and research support and access to academic sources.
DEVELOPING THE INFORMATION LITERATE STUDENT. Beginning with JumpStart students, the university library’s Information Literacy Program supports student growth in research and encourages critical thought about information and learning processes throughout the student’s academic career. Closely, aligned with the university’s general studies objectives, this program provides students with the opportunity to learn about the contextual authority of information, explore information creation as a process, consider the value of information, practice research as inquiry, scholarship as communication, and searching as exploration.
RESEARCH AND REFERENCE ASSISTANCE. Librarians, library staff, and library student assistants are dedicated to serving the information needs of students and faculty. They seek to facilitate student success through assistance in finding articles and other resources for papers, speeches, and other assignments through Research Guides, face-to-face interactions, chat and email reference, and the LibAnswers Knowledge Base. More in-depth research consultation is also available.
RESOURCES AND RESEARCH CENTRAL. Research Central, WWU’s online discovery system, connects students and faculty on all campuses to the WWU Libraries’ collections. The combined WWU libraries contain over 460,000 items, including books, eBooks, print and online journals, videos, DVDs, and streaming video. Over 100 full-text databases provide access to thousands of journal articles, academic videos, and reference resources. Subscriptions for many of the library’s databases are made possible by membership in library consortia such as the Adventist Library Information Cooperative (ALICE) and Orbis Cascade Alliance. Off-campus access is available to current students and faculty with their university login.
Research Central also connects students to resources in the university’s Curriculum Library (School of Education), Hutto Patterson Research Center (history department), and the English department’s film literature collection.
Summit Borrowing in Research Central, made available through membership in the Orbis Cascade Alliance, offers direct access to over 28 million items, including books, sound recordings, and films held by over 38 other academic libraries in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. College Place and Portland students, faculty, and staff may request Summit items online directly through the Research Central. Material pickup is available for the Peterson or Portland libraries and delivery time is typically five to seven business days. Presently, the Summit service is not available to the Montana MSW sites.
Interlibrary Loan. For those items not available in the university’s collections or Summit, yet needed for either course work or faculty research, the university libraries offer an interlibrary loan service for resources available within the United States. Requested materials generally arrive within two weeks.
STUDY AREAS. Study spaces are available on every campus. Peterson Memorial Library offers online room reservations, accessible through the library’s website, for a number of its study areas.
CURRICULUM LIBRARY. Located in Smith Hall and operated by the School of Education, the Curriculum library contains K-12 textbooks, children’s literature and magazines, standardized tests, math and science manipulatives, games, puppets, die cutter and dies, laminator, copier, computers, and scanner.