Knowledge UNBOUND
Dean: Adriene Lim
Associate Dean: Shawn V. Lombardo
Assistant Dean: Linda Kreger
Director, Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine Library: Nancy Bulgarelli
Professor Emeriti: William Cramer, Indra M. David, Suzanne O. Frankie, George L. Gardiner, Robert G. Gaylor, Linda L. Hildebrand, Janet A. Krompart, Mildred H. Merz, Richard L. Pettengill, Ann M. Pogany
Professor: Kristine S. Condic
Associate professors: Elizabeth Kraemer, Frank Lepkowski, Misa Mi
Assistant professors: Dominique Daniel, Keith Engwall, Meghan Finch, Katie Greer, Amanda N. Hess, Mariela Hristova, Daniel F. Ring, Julia Rodriguez, Anne Switzer, Stephanie Swanberg
Managers: Rob Burns, Library Technology Services; Eric Condic, Embedded Systems and Strategic Projects; Rachelle La Porte, Circulation Services and Resource Sharing
Library Facilities
Located in the center of campus, the Kresge Library houses the main library and the Medical Library. The library provides seating for individual study, rooms for group work, meeting rooms, audiovisual rooms, and a café that features a full range of coffee drinks, teas and snacks for on-the-go students. The third floor of the building is designated for quiet study, while the newly-renovated fourth floor provides powered tables and casual seating spaces to facilitate collaborative study.
The Learning Commons on the second floor offers a combination of PC and Mac desktop workstations, areas for wireless laptop use, breakout rooms with presentation computers and equipment, and areas with modular furniture to facilitate a flexible learning environment for research, sharing, and knowledge creation by students. Adaptive equipment for students with disabilities is also available. For library instructional purposes, there are two networked computer labs with 25 workstations in each. Laptop computers are available for checkout to students at the Circulation Desk.
In addition to its own operations and resources, the library hosts the Writing Center, the OU Help Desk, and e-Learning and Instructional Support.
Library Collections
The Libraries’ collections include more than 50,000 e-books, 75,000 journal titles in electronic and print formats, 800,000 print volumes, musical scores, multimedia resources, and more. The Libraries subscribe to more than 130 online databases and now feature Library OneSearch, a discovery tool that enables users to search the Libraries’ print and electronic holdings simultaneously with a single search. Last year patrons conducted 1.4 million searches in library databases and retrieved over a million full-text articles from our electronic collections. The Libraries’ Web site serves as a gateway to research databases, electronic reference sources, full-text articles and e-books, as well as to subject guides and online tutorials to help users navigate the research tools of a wide range of disciplines.
Special collections include federal and state government documents, the Hicks Collection of Early Books by and about women, the Springer Collection of Lincolniana, the Gaylor Collection of GLBT Literature, the James Collection of Books on Folklore and Witchcraft, the China Gift Collection, and the Bingham Collection of Historical Children’s Literature.
The University Archives, housed on the first floor, is a repository of materials relating to the history of Oakland University, and includes copies of all dissertations written at OU. Digitized archival collections include the student newspapers and other publications, Board of Trustees’ minutes, and other important documents. These online materials, as well as a growing faculty research collection, are available through the OUR@Oakland institutional repository, which is organized and maintained by library faculty and staff.
Library Services
Web site: library.oakland.edu
Phone: (248) 370-4426
Send an e-mail message to a librarian: ref@oakland.edu
Research Help
Librarians provide research assistance in-person at the Research Help Desk, by telephone, by e-mail, and via instant messaging. Librarians also offer individualized and customized research consultation sessions by appointment. These in-depth, one-to-one sessions are designed to help students identify and use resources pertinent to their research.
Library instruction
As information literacy specialists, librarians provide extensive instruction for students on using information resources, constructing effective research strategies, and evaluating information. These instruction sessions are a core component of every WRT 160 course. Librarians also provide customized, course-related sessions in the disciplines, as well as workshops on special topics.
Circulation and course reserve services
At the Circulation Desk, undergraduate students may borrow books for a period of three weeks, with unlimited renewals unless another borrower has requested the materials. Students may also borrow materials that have been placed on course reserve by their professors. An increasing number of reserve items are made available online.
Interlibrary loan service
Students may request books and articles not owned by the Libraries through our interlibrary loan service and through MelCat, a statewide resource sharing system. Requests can be made in person or through forms available on the Libraries’ website.
