About the Libraries

 

Purpose
Available Materials
Electronic Resources
Locating Materials

 

Purpose

The St. Olaf College Libraries serve the College community by providing access to a universe of information, knowledge, and art and by providing systematic instruction in the retrieval and evaluation of information from its many sources. As teaching libraries, we offer active support for the College mission of stimulating critical thinking and of lifelong learning, and for the College curriculum, committed to the liberal arts, a global perspective, and rooted in the Christian Gospel.

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Available Materials

The collection, housed in three separate libraries (Rolvaag Library, Glasoe Science Library, and Halvorson Music Library) contains over 596,000 items including books, music scores, bound periodicals, sound recordings, videos, and electronic resources. More than 1,600 periodicals are currently received. Journals are also available electronically through Project Muse and JSTOR and can be accessed through the Libraries' homepage (see the Indexes: Articles & More page). The Libraries are also a partial depository for Federal Government Publications (see the Government Documents page).

While the collections primarily provide the basic resources required for the breadth of undergraduate study, they have unusual strengths and emphases which reflect the unique elements in the tradition of the College. They are especially strong in the fields of religion, Scandinavian literature and history, mathematics and music. St. Olaf is one of the few places where extensive materials can be found on the culture of Norwegian-Americans, and particularly on their church life.

Vault materials and some Rare Books may be retrieved with permission from a Reference Librarian for in-library use. Request forms are available at the circulation desk. Vault materials are retrieved once a day, Monday-Friday.

Bridge, our shared online catalog with Carleton, contains information on virtually all books, videos, music scores and sound recordings in the Libraries' collections. Exceptions are some specialized materials and some government documents. The online catalog may be accessed from all three libraries, as well as throughout the campus computer network. Printers for copying catalog records are available in all libraries.

Records for periodicals held by the St. Olaf Libraries and Carleton are included in Bridge. U.S. Government Documents holdings which are not in Bridge are recorded in a shelflist in the Government Documents area of Rolvaag Library. Indexes, abstracts and other bibliographic tools for identifying specific sources are available in the reference areas of each library.

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Electronic Resources

Indexes and databases are available online and on CD-ROM workstations in the St. Olaf College Libraries in most disciplines. A full list of the indexes and databases is available on the Indexes: Articles & More page. These can be accessed by subject or by title. Full Internet access is available and the Libraries maintain links to Scholarly & Reference Web Sites.

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Locating Materials

Books and scores are arranged on shelves according to the Library of Congress Classification System which separates all knowledge into 21 classes, each identified by a letter of the alphabet. These 21 classes are often subdivided by a second letter, and always by numbers. Locate items alphabetically and numerically by their call numbers.

Periodicals are shelved alphabetically by title. Check Sage or MUSE list to determine the correct form of the title.

Reference books are identified by "R.R." or "Ref." on the top or bottom line of the call number. Books with "Atlases" as part of the call number are shelved in the atlas collection in the Rolvaag Reference Room. Reference materials do not circulate.

The library is a partial depository for U.S. Government Documents. Most documents are kept in a separate collection on Level 3 of Rolvaag, arranged by the Superintendent of Documents Classification System (SuDocs). Many documents are published on microfiche. They are arranged in the same manner and are filed in the microform area on Level 3. Some recent documents are published on compact disc. They are available in the document reference area. Most periodicals issued by the government are interfiled with the general documents collection (see Government Documents for more information).

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