06/05/2025
By Julie Nash

The University Library has spent the past year focused on growing and improving our collections to better serve the campus community. Your responses to last spring's Faculty Library Collections Survey helped shape our priorities, and we’re pleased to share several new resources that reflect your needs and suggestions.

Among other improvements, we upgraded to "ProQuest One Academic," which provides full text access to more than 14,000 journals and newspapers, full text for millions of theses and dissertations, and access to 84,000 streaming videos on the Academic Video Online platform.

In addition, to better support research and teaching in Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Science, we purchased perpetual access to "ProQuest Early English Books Online," "ProQuest American Periodical Series," "Gale Declassified Documents Online," and "Gale Decolonization: Politics & Independence in Former Colonial & Commonwealth Territories."

"ProQuest Early English Books Online" is a historical archive that digitized 146,600 historical texts from microfilm. "Gale Decolonization: Politics & Independence in Former Colonial & Commonwealth Territories" has political ephemera and organizational material produced in over 70 countries and territories around the world throughout the twentieth century.

Another highlight is the "American Periodical Series," which opens a window into the history of American print culture. The series, also from ProQuest, includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the early 20th century. Titles range from Massachusetts Magazine, which published America's first short stories, America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository, as well as popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal and journals like "The Dial," "Puck," and "McClure's."

We invite the entire university community to explore our new "Book Love Collection," a growing favorite among students. These are popular books purchased with a generous donation from Professor Emeritus David Wunsch and from alumni Cheryl and Paul Katen. Both Lydon and O’Leary have books in this collection. The collection at Lydon is located in our new book nook on the first floor, room 110. The collection at O’Leary will be moving to the 4th floor.

Coming in the fall will be a “Library of Things” that includes a collection of calculators and assistive devices that students, faculty and staff can borrow.

We are committed to continued evaluation of the resources in our collection to make sure faculty have the materials they need for research and teaching. Questions? Requests? Visit the "Ask a Librarian" site.