Educating for change: A Vision for the Hampshire Library

The Hampshire College library is a dynamic hub of people, technology, and information that serves as an incubator of ideas across all disciplines. Educating for change demands comprehension of the past and vision for the future. The library’s innovative and risk-taking intellectual environment fosters new ways of creating knowledge and understanding.

We aspire to:

• Serve as a welcoming social and intellectual center of the College.
• Partner with students, faculty, and staff in reimagining the library.
• Embrace transformations in research and collections, building on the foundational collaboration between collections, technology, and media to redefine library services.
• Create connections between people, tools, and ideas.
• Empower a creative and energetic staff to experiment, expand the library’s reach across campus, and anticipate student needs in a rapidly changing world.
• Adapt and design collections, formats, and access to promote an open learning environment.

Library Facts and Figures
Library collections, as of June 2011:

Books: 121,837
E-books: 64,469
Bound volumes of journals: 9,712
Current journal subscriptions (Print): 307
E-journal subscriptions (Online): 56,041
Div IIIs: 2995
Music CDs: 4957
Videos and DVDs: 4,857
16mm Films: 894

ALEPH, the Five College integrated library system from major library systems vendor Ex Libris, provides access to Hampshire's library collections as well as those of the other Five Colleges. It allows Hampshire students, faculty, and staff to request books from the other colleges to be sent to Hampshire for pickup, as well as view and/or renew the books they have checked out from each of the libraries.