We have organized our physical materials into several distinct collections within the Library space. These materials include books, magazines, journals, and newspapers, CDs and DVDs, and Normandale publications and reports. All items are cataloged using the Library of Congress classification system (except magazines, newspapers, and journals). Below is an overview of the Library’s physical collections.
Interested in our online collections instead? Explore our online library databases to access million of articles, ebooks, and videos from home.
This is the largest collection in the Library space. We have tens of thousands of books on many topics chosen by librarians and your other instructors to support you in your coursework and personal development.
A few books are too large to be shelved with the other General Collection books. These large books, regardless of topic, are organized together on shelves that can accommodate their size.
A collection of award-winning children’s picture books to support students in Children’s Literature courses and students raising young children.
Most of our magazines, newspapers and scholarly journals are in our online collections. We receive print copies of select magazines, newspapers and scholarly journals. The most recent issue of each publication is on the display racks for you to read in the Library. Ask for older issues at the Circulation Desk. You may borrow any issue not currently on display.
We have sabbatical reports filed by Normandale faculty from 1993 to the present. Note: Only Normandale employees may borrow sabbatical reports.
Instructors place books and other items needed for particular classes in the Reserve Collection. Items in the Reserve Collection have very short borrowing periods, so more students can use them. Ask to borrow reserve items at the Circulation Desk. Some reserve items may not leave the Library, but you are welcome to use them in the Library.
The Reference Collection contains select books with brief entries and topic overviews like encyclopedias, dictionaries, style manuals, and statistical compilations. These books are meant to answer your immediate questions or jumpstart your research. You usually need to read only a page or two. To remain available for everyone, the books in the Reference Collection do not leave the Library. (There are often similar books available in the General Collection and in our online collections.)
We have DVDs, CDs, kits and other audiovisual items that your instructors selected to support Normandale courses. An instructor may show a library DVD in class, or you may watch our DVDs in the Library. While you must keep DVDs in the Library, you can borrow music CDs for home use.
We have several Twin Cities newspapers from 1971 to 2011 preserved on microfilm. Using the microfilm scanner, you can access newspaper articles that are not available in online formats. Ask at the Reference Desk for help using the newspaper indexes to identify articles of interest or for assistance using the microfilm scanner. You can use the scanner to view the microfilm and save digital copies of images/pages to print or email to yourself.
“Closed Stacks” is a small collection with three kinds of items: a few fragile books and manuscripts, Normandale-related publications in print and microfilm, and master back-up copies of some videos. You can easily access copies of most of the Normandale-related print publications in the General Collection and copies of the videos in the Audiovisual collection. To access items with copies only in the Closed Stacks, ask at the Reference Desk or the Circulation desk. Items in the Closed Stacks Collection cannot leave the Library.
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