2013–2014 The Bulletin - USS at Tufts - Tufts University

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Discourse: The Tufts Interdisciplinary Journal
Dedicated to the Power of Reason and the Exchange of
Ideas (2007–)
Discourse began as a Synaptic Scholars project.
It provides an inclusive campus wide platform for
reasoned discussion and prescriptive analysis of
issues of both international and domestic concern,
while also including poetry, fiction, art and
photography to illuminate the human condition.
Its emphasis is on exploring a diversity of thought
and perspectives from students, scholars and
practitioners. The purpose of Discourse is to
provide an open forum for discussion of contemporary
dilemmas, not as a vehicle with any specific
political or intellectual agenda.
Academic and Support Services
Library Resources at Tufts
The Tufts University libraries support the educational
and research programs of the university by
serving students, faculty, and staff. On the Medford/
Somerville campus are the Tisch Library serving
the schools of Arts & Sciences and Engineering;
the Edwin Ginn Library of the Fletcher School of
Law and Diplomacy; and the Department of
Digital Collections and Archives, which manages
the university’s growing digital collections and
houses the university’s archives. The Hirsh Health
Sciences Library serves the Tufts health sciences
schools on the Boston campus. The Webster Family
Veterinary Medical Library serves the Grafton
campus.
The Tufts libraries share one Integrated Library
System (ILS). The online catalog provides access to
resources physically and virtually available within
the Tufts libraries and beyond. The resources of
these libraries include over 3 million bibliographic
items: books, journals, videos, music CDs, microforms,
slides, pamphlets, and government publications.
Along with the catalog of the libraries’
rapidly expanding collections, each library’s website
hosts a state-of-the-art array of electronic databases,
links to other websites, systems and services
including a body of research tools accessible from
each library’s home page using any Web browser.
Web resources are selected by the libraries for their
value to Tufts faculty and students and include a
substantial number of electronic resources: over
60,000 electronic journals, which contain full-text
articles, in over 400 electronic databases and indexes,
and over 200,000 electronic books.
Students and faculty can also gain access
through the university libraries to the resources of
the eighteen academic and research libraries
belonging to the Boston Library Consortium and,
through interlibrary loan, to library collections
throughout the country and abroad.
The Tisch Library
The Tisch Library provides support for the
instructional and research needs of the faculty,
students, and staff in the Schools of Arts &
Sciences and Engineering. The physical facilities of
the Tisch Library consist of the Tisch and Lilly
Music libraries, and reading rooms for Biology,
Chemistry, Geology, and Physics.
Renovated, expanded and renamed in 1996, the
Tisch Library provides a user-friendly learning
environment that combines printed library
materials with state-of-the-art electronic resources.
The library provides seating for up to a quarter of
the student body, print and electronic collections, a
Media Center with five electronic classrooms, a
Digital Design Studio for digital media production,
a computer-equipped classroom to teach library
research skills, a university-wide Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) Center, and a café with
a student art gallery and faculty publications
display.
The library is a depository for federal government
publications, including maps. Special
collections include the personal library of Hosea
Ballou II, the Ritter Collection of Musicology, and
the Bolles Collection of English history and other
rare books and manuscripts. The library has begun
to digitize its special collections and integrate them
into classroom projects. The library is also digitizing
materials from its stack collections and making
them available through the Internet Archive.
The library has an active laptop lending program,
and it also lends digital production equipment such
as recorders and cameras. Free scanning centers are
available throughout the library. The Media Center
provides streaming access to its reserved collection
through Video Furnace.
Tisch Library has an extensive library instruction
program that is integrated into the curriculum.
Principles of information literacy are incorporated
in learning objectives designed by departments and
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