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EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES
SMU Libraries
Service to Southern Methodist University students, faculty and staff is the primary goal of all libraries at SMU. The libraries of the University contain more than 2.8 million volumes. PONI, a fully interactive Web- and Windows-based client-server system, features access to bibliographic records of materials housed in all SMU Libraries and hypertext links to other databases, digitized collections and relevant Web sites.
SMU Libraries rank first in total volumes held among non-ARL (Association of Research Libraries) universities in the United States. The SMU Libraries, which rank highly within the region, comprise the largest private research library in the Southwest and rank third within the region in total volumes, after the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University. SMU Libraries are one of the greatest assets of the University.
The University's library system is divided into a number of different units:
- Central University Libraries (reporting to the Office of the Provost)
- Underwood Law Library (reporting to the Dedman School of Law)
- Bridwell Library (reporting to the Perkins School of Theology)
- Business Information Center (reporting to the Cox School of Business)
Central University Libraries
The largest of the SMU library units is Central University Libraries (CUL), with holdings of more than 2 million volumes. CUL comprises Fondren Library, the Hamon Arts Library, the Science and Engineering Library, the DeGolyer Library and SMU Archives, the ISEM (Institute for the Study of Earth and Man) Reading Room and the Norwick Center for Digital Services. CUL also supports SMU programs at the Legacy campus and SMU-in-Taos.
Fondren Library, with more than 1 million volumes of books, government publications and bound journals, serves students and faculty in the areas of humanities, social sciences, business and education. Its Information Commons provides a single location within the library where students can use library books and online resources as well as the latest computer software and technology to prepare their assignments. Fondren Library is a selective depository for government information resources and has a large microforms collection of retrospective periodicals and special collections in the humanities and social sciences.
Strengths of the Fondren Library include, but are not limited to, classical studies, late 18th- and early 19th-century English literature, American history, Texas history, contemporary biography and literature, anthropology, political science, economics and other social sciences. Fondren Library also provides reading materials placed on reserve by classroom faculty and access to holdings from other libraries nationwide via interlibrary loan.
Hamon Arts Library, with holdings of more than 180,000 volumes, serves students and faculty in the areas of music, fine arts and performing arts. It focuses on the classical traditions of European art with additional resources in the areas of American arts, especially Southwestern arts. The Jerry Bywaters Special Collections wing has as its focus the art and artists of the Southwest; the music life of Dallas; regional theatre history; fashion throughout the ages; and regional architecture. The library contains excellent technological facilities, including a computer laboratory, multimedia authoring workstations, and video and laser disc information resources.
The G. William Jones Film/Video Collection in Hamon Arts Library, founded in 1967, is the only moving-image archive in the Southwest and one of the oldest and largest in the United States. The mission of the collection is to find, preserve, study and share the world’s diverse film heritage for current and future generations. It is one of the few archives to actively seek out and preserve independent feature films. The collection is housed in the Greer Garson Theatre. Funded by a gift from the actress, the facility provides research space, screening rooms for 35mm and 16mm films and video projection, preservation and restoration space and a 3,800-square-foot climate-controlled film and video storage vault. The collection specializes in multicultural films and video productions, and holds 7,000 films and 2,500 videocassettes. It holds an extensive collection of early African American film and is committed to finding and preserving these materials. The collection’s Tyler, Texas, Black Film Collection contains more than 120 titles, including Blood of Jesus, which was chosen by the Library of Congress as a national film treasure.
The archive supports the University community by providing films and videotapes from the collection, screening and research facilities and staff curriculum support. The archive also serves the research purposes of numerous other colleges, universities, museums and libraries, as well as television and film producers.
Science and Engineering Library contains holdings of more than 700,000 volumes and serves students and faculty in the areas of the sciences and engineering. The Science and Engineering Library is responsible for the University’s map collection, which includes more than 220,000 topographic and geologic maps and aerial photographs, and the DeGolyer Earth Sciences collection of more than 15,000 geological volumes.
CUL has a corporate research service – IIS – housed in the Science and Engineering Library, providing cost-recovery, fee-based information services to the business and corporate community outside the University.
DeGolyer Library of Special Collections is a non-circulating special collections branch of CUL that contains more than 100,000 volumes. It includes 11,000 feet of manuscripts and more than 500,000 photographs that do not circulate outside of the building. The DeGolyer Library is open to all students and faculty for research in areas such as the Trans-Mississippi West, particularly the Southwest and Spanish borderlands, and transportation history, especially railroads. It also is strong in Southwestern history and literature. This library, in particular, attracts scholars and researchers from around the country and from the local community to research the Paul Horgan, J. Frank Dobie and Horton Foote collections, and the newly acquired personal library of Stanley Marcus. It also holds the most complete collection of Texian currency in North America.
SMU Archives, part of the DeGolyer Library, is a non-circulating collection not open to the public. The Archives contain historical records, photographs, documents and memorabilia concerning the establishment and growth of the University. Administrative personnel of the University, local historians and media personnel from throughout the city are its principal users.
ISEM Reading Room, with 10,000 volumes, serves students and faculty of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man. It contains a wealth of information relating to anthropology and geological and geophysical sciences.
The Norwick Center for Digital Services is responsible for multimedia resources, production services, instructional development services and classroom distribution services. It offers classroom and individual viewing of over 9,000 documentary and feature film videocassettes, video discs, films and audiotapes, most of which can be found by using the PONI online catalog.
The Business Information Center
The Business Information Center (BIC) is located in room 150 of the Maguire Building. This premier facility includes a reading room, three microcomputer labs, reference area, periodicals, BIC staff offices, the Hillcrest Foundation International Resource Library, the Edwin L. Cox Business Leadership Center Resource Collection, the Cary M. Maguire Energy Institute Resource Collection and the Career Management Center Library.
The BIC’s mission is to provide the SMU community with business information regardless of format, support the integration of information and technology into the curriculum, and act as a center for research and development for state-of-the-art information technology applications in the business education field. Microsoft Windows XP is the operating system on the 70-plus computers that run applications such as Microsoft Office 2003 and compilers Microsoft Visual Basic and C++. Two high-speed printers, two photocopiers, a color laser printer and a scanner are available. For more traditional print resources in business, students and faculty use Fondren Library.
Bridwell Library
The Bridwell Library of Perkins School of Theology, with more than 350,000 volumes and over 75,000 microform volumes, is the principal bibliographic resource for the fields of theology and religious studies. Bridwell Library is also the premier rare book and manuscripts library on campus and in the region. The library holds the largest collection of 15th-century books in the Southwest and the fourth largest university collection in the United States.
Other distinctive special collections are in the area of early printed Bibles, Renaissance and Reformation imprints, the history of printing, early Methodism, and 18th-century English culture and the art of the book. Bridwell Library is an important cultural center for the region, offering a variety of public programs including lectures, workshops, concerts and conferences, as well as award-winning exhibition and publishing programs.
Underwood Law Library
Underwood Law Library, one of the 30 largest law libraries in the country and the largest private law library in the Southwest, houses more than 600,000 volumes and primarily serves the faculty and students of the Dedman School of Law. The collection includes state and federal legislative, judicial and administrative materials; law periodicals; law treatises; U.S., international and foreign documents; and U.S. government documents relating to the legal profession.
Strengths of the collection are in taxation, securities, corporate law, labor law, air and space law, commercial and banking law, constitutional law, and law and medicine. The Kay and Ray Hutchison Legal Resource Learning Center in the Underwood Law Library is a computer learning lab located on the third floor.
Laboratories and Research Facilities
The University provides many laboratories and much equipment for courses in accounting, anthropology, art, biology, chemistry, languages, geological sciences, communication arts, psychology, physics, health and physical education, dance, music, theatre, statistics and civil, computer, electrical, environmental and mechanical engineering. (Descriptions of the engineering laboratories are carried in the School of Engineering section and other University facilities are described in sections for the individual schools.)
The teaching laboratories of the departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Geological Sciences and Physics are housed in the Fondren Science Building and in the Dedman Life Sciences Building. Virtually all teaching laboratories and support facilities in the buildings have been remodeled and updated.
Students have access to a wide array of specialized instrumentation and laboratory equipment fundamental to studies in the natural sciences, including spectrophotometers, high-performance liquid chromatographs, scintillation counter, fluorescence-activated cell sorter, scanning laser confocal microscope, electron resonance spectrometer, X-ray diffractometers, mass spectrometers and an atomic absorption spectrometer. Advanced undergraduate research is also supported by tissue culture and animal care facilities, as well as several departmental computer laboratories.
SMU-in-Taos, Fort Burgwin, is located 10 miles south of Taos, New Mexico, at an elevation of 7,500 feet. The facility includes classrooms, laboratories, offices and a library, as well as living accommodations for students and faculty. Northern New Mexico offers a multiplicity of research opportunities for both natural and social scientists. Pot Creek Pueblo, located on the fort’s property, is one of the largest prehistoric archaeological sites in the northern Rio Grande Valley.
The N.L. Heroy Science Hall houses the departments of Anthropology, Geological Sciences, Sociology and Statistical Sciences, as well as the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.
The Institute for the Study of Earth and Man was created in 1966 by a gift from W.B. Heroy Sr. Its purpose is to support research at the interface of humans, Earth and the environment.
The Department of Geological Sciences operates several unique laboratories, including the following:
The Dallas Seismological Observatory, established by the Dallas Geophysical Society, is maintained and operated by the University and now monitors remote seismic stations in southwest Texas near Lajitas, seismically one of the world’s quietest regions. The Lajitas array is used to test technology designed to detect small earthquakes from great distances. In addition to the Lajitas seismic array, SMU operates seismic and infrasound arrays at Mina, Nevada, as well as at overseas locations. Data collected by the observatory are available to the faculty and advanced students who wish to undertake basic research in seismology or tectonics.
The Ellis W. Shuler Museum of Paleontology is a research museum affording opportunities for advanced study of fossil faunas and floras and their climatic and paleoecologic significance. The collection, which specializes in vertebrate paleontology, includes more than 150,000 fossils from the United States, Central America and northeastern Africa.
The Pollen Analysis Laboratory is operated in conjunction with the Shuler Museum of Paleontology. The laboratory serves SMU research projects focused on the reconstruction of past vegetation, past climate and paleoecology at localities around the world. The facility includes two fume hoods, glassware, centrifuges, scales, a convection oven and storage space necessary for the dry and wet processing of sediment samples for their pollen content. Microscopic analysis of the resulting pollen sample residues takes place in a separate laboratory housing transmitted light microscopes, a comparative collection of modern pollen, and a small paleobotany and palynology research library.
The Geothermal Laboratory is the focus of an extensive program of research in the thermal field of the Earth. Geothermal energy resources and the thermal fields of sedimentary basins are special topics of concentration. The research is worldwide in scope. Specialized equipment for the measurement of thermal conductivity of rocks, and for the measurement of accurate, precise temperature logs in deep wells is available for research purposes. Services are provided to other institutions and research centers on a contractual basis.
The Hydrothermal Laboratory contains equipment to reproduce the pressures and temperatures existing to mid-crustal depths. It contains two extraction-quench sampling bombs that permit withdrawal of solution during the progress of a run to pressures of 3 kbar and 750°C. There are also 10 cold-seal reaction vessels. In addition, 1 atm furnaces are available that can be used to temperatures of 1400°C.
The Electron Microprobe Laboratory contains a fully automated JEOL 733 electron microprobe with four wavelength dispersive X-ray spectrometers, a Link eXL energy dispersive X-ray and associated sample preparation equipment. It is available on a regular basis for various research projects in the institute, the University and other research institutions.
The Stable Isotope Laboratory is a general research facility available to support both academic and student research in the University and in other research centers. The laboratory contains three automated gas-source, magnetic-sector isotope ratio mass spectrometers as well as vacuum extraction lines for converting natural materials (solids, liquids and gases) into gases suitable for measuring the isotope ratios of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen at natural abundance.
The Variable Pressure Scanning Electron Microprobe (SEM) Laboratory contains a Zeiss SMT 1450 VPSE SEM used for generating electron photomicrographs with 5 nanometer resolution. The facility is open to researchers and students from Geological Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Engineering and Chemistry. The SEM is also equipped with an Edax energy dispersive X-ray system for quantitative determination of chemical compositions of the imaged materials.
The X-ray Diffraction Laboratory houses a Rigaku Ultima III diffractometer for the X-ray identification of materials with a crystalline structure and is open to researchers and students from Geological Sciences, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences and Engineering.
Museum
The Meadows Museum, founded by the late philanthropist Algur H. Meadows and located at 5900 Bishop Boulevard, houses one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain as well as selected masterpieces of modern European sculpture from Rodin and Maillol to David Smith and Claes Oldenburg. The permanent collection of 670 objects includes painting, sculpture, decorative arts and works on paper from the Middle Ages to the present. Artists represented include El Greco, Velázquez, Ribera, Zurbarán, Murillo, Goya, Picasso and Miró.
The Meadows Museum hosts a regular program of loan exhibitions each year in its temporary exhibition galleries and sponsors an active program of public lectures, tours, films, concerts, and symposia, as well as a children’s summer art program and family days throughout the year. Museum collections are often utilized by SMU faculty in their courses. The museum membership program includes exhibition previews, tours of private collections and opportunities for travel. Docent tours of the collection are available to school, University and adult groups. The Meadows Museum, in addition to its collection, houses The Gates restaurant, a museum store and a special event room.
