Libraries
With holdings of over three million volumes, the Rutgers University Libraries rank among the nation’s top research libraries. Comprised of twenty-six libraries, centers, and reading rooms located on Rutgers’ campuses in New Brunswick/Piscataway, Camden, and Newark, as well as RU-Online, a digital library, the Libraries provide the resources and services necessary to support the university’s mission of teaching, research, and service.
There are two large research libraries on the New Brunswick/Piscataway campuses: the Library of Science and Medicine, which houses the primary collections in behavioral, biological, earth and pharmaceutical sciences, and engineering; and the Archibald S. Alexander Library, which provides extensive humanities and social sciences collections. The Mabel Smith Douglass Library supports undergraduate education and houses the primary collections for women’s studies and the performing arts. The Kilmer Library is the primary business library in New Brunswick and provides support for undergraduate instruction. There are also several specialized libraries and collections in the New Brunswick/Piscataway area including Alcohol Studies, Art, Stephen and Lucy Chang Science Library, Chemistry, East Asian, Mathematical Sciences, Music, Physics, and Special Collections and University Archives. The Scholarly Communication Center supports the development and integration of scholarly/scientific/educational information into the mainstream through a wide range of innovative digital services, while the Marjory Somers Fosters Center is a resource center and digital archive on women, scholarship, and leadership.
The John Cotton Dana Library in Newark (which also houses the Institute of Jazz Studies) supports all undergraduate and graduate programs offered on the Newark Campus with emphasis on business, management, and nursing. The Robeson Library houses a broad liberal arts collection, which supports all undergraduate and graduate programs offered on the Camden campus. Law Libraries are also located on both the Camden and Newark campuses and have separate policies and online catalogs. The law library at Newark houses The Don M. Gottfredson Library of Criminal Justice.
The Libraries provide numerous electronic resources to the Rutgers community. Library users can search IRIS, the online catalog, through the Libraries’ web site at http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu. IRIS identifies materials owned by Rutgers libraries located in Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick/Piscataway. Students, faculty, and staff can also access a variety of electronic indexes and abstracts, full-text electronic journals, research guides, and library services online, both from campus and remotely. The Libraries provide hundreds of CD-ROM titles in addition to online resources.
Rutgers University students, faculty, staff, and alumni are entitled to borrow materials from any of the Rutgers University Libraries. The Rutgers Delivery Service and Interlibrary Loan Service allows students, faculty, and staff to request books and journal articles located at distant Rutgers libraries or outside the university. The loan period for faculty, staff, and graduate students is one full semester. All other borrowers, including undergraduate students, may keep materials for twenty-eight days. All materials, regardless of loan period or borrower’s privileges, are subject to recall.
Librarians, many with advanced subject expertise, are available at all of the major libraries to assist with research projects, classroom instruction, and research strategies. In addition to individual instruction at the reference desk, librarians also provide in-class teaching at instructors’ requests. Librarians are available to help with both computerized and non-computerized reference and subject searches.
The Libraries are committed to providing equal access to services and collections for all library patrons. Users with disabilities may request special services through the circulation or reference department in each library.
