Meadows School of the Arts - Educational Facilities
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 2.9 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 websites.
SMU libraries rank first in total volumes held among non-ARL (Association of Research Libraries) universities in the United States. The SMU libraries 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).
The Business Information Center
The Business Information Center is located in room 150 of the Maguire Building. The mission of the BIC 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. In support of this mission, the BIC offers the SMU community both quiet and group study areas; individual and group computer areas consisting of 70 computer workstations; a multimedia studio; a group presentation practice room; a periodicals area; facility-wide wireless access; over 150 electronic resources; and a variety of print resources, including 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. Librarians are available all hours that the BIC is open, offering reference assistance both in-person and virtually via e-mail and telephone. Librarians provide course specific, in-class instruction at the request of instructors and lead workshops on performing business research.
Bridwell Library
Bridwell Library of the Perkins School of Theology is the University’s principal research resource for the fields of theology and religious studies. It offers a collection of over 350,000 volumes and 1,200 current periodical titles and provides access to a wide array of online full-text journals and databases. Among the library’s special collections are significant holdings in early printing, English and American Methodism, theology, religion, and the book arts. The interpretation of these collections is accomplished variously through lectures, publications and exhibitions. Reference librarians are available to help students discover and use the many resources of Bridwell Library.
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 630,000 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.
Central University Libraries
The largest of the SMU library units is Central University Libraries, with holdings of more than
2.1 million volumes. CUL comprises Fondren Library, the Hamon Arts Library, the Science and Engineering Library, the DeGolyer Library and SMU Archives, the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man Reading Room, and the Norwick Center for Media and Instructional Technology. CUL also supports SMU programs at the Legacy campus and SMU-in-Taos.
Fondren Library, with more than one 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 large electronic collections 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, located in the Owen Arts Center of the Meadows School of the Arts, serves students and faculty in the areas of visual art, art history, cinema, communications, dance, music and theater. With more than 180,000 volumes of books, sound recordings and video recordings, the library’s collections support the Meadows curriculum and are particularly strong in European and American arts. The library also provides conference room facilities; group audio-visual study and presentation rooms; and public computers for research, study and arts-specific software projects.
The Jerry Bywaters Special Collections wing has as its focus the art and artists of the Southwest, the musical life of Dallas, regional theater history, fashion history, and regional architecture. The G. William Jones Film and Video Collection, founded in 1967, holds over 10,000 films and videos on a wide array of subjects and in all formats. The Jones Collection is best known for its Tyler, Texas, Black Film Collection and for the Sulphur Springs Collection of pre-nickelodeon films.
The 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 is a noncirculating special collections branch of CUL that contains
more than 120,000 volumes. In addition to rare books, it holds over 2 million manuscripts,
500,000 photographs, 2,500 newspaper and periodical titles, 2,000 maps, and an extensive collection of ephemera that includes the largest collection of Texas bank notes in the country. The DeGolyer Library is open to all students and faculty. Great strengths of the DeGolyer Library include a large collection of books on early voyages and travels, especially those bearing on the European discovery and exploration of the New World. The collection of Western Americana is numbered among the finest in the country, and the library has exceptionally well-developed collections in the fields of business history, such as the JCPenney archives, and transportation history, in particular the history of railroads. Its holdings in the history of science and technology, which include the Texas Instruments archives, have much to offer the researcher. Literary collections include a respectable range of English and American authors and literary genres, from a 16th-century edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to dime novels and comic books. DeGolyer collections also afford numerous opportunities for interdisciplinary research in such fields as American studies, Southwestern studies, women’s studies, popular culture, the history of photography and the history of the book.
University Archives, part of the DeGolyer library, is the official repository for SMU records and other materials of historical importance. The archives contain manuscripts, photographs, documents and memorabilia concerning the establishment and growth of the University. SMU administrators, faculty, local historians and media representatives are its principal users, but students and visiting scholars often use its materials for a variety of research projects.
The 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 in CUL encompasses student multimedia and collaborative technology areas, digitization/production services, and a screening room. The Student Multimedia Center provides students with access to high-end computers, software, collaborative spaces and staff assistance to develop a variety of digital projects such as DVDs and Web video, digital portfolios, and other media-intensive projects. The Library Digital Projects Office focuses on digitizing library collections for preservation and increased access. The screening room allows for video screenings and computer projection for instruction and training.
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The University provides many laboratories and much equipment for courses in accounting; anthropology; art; biology; chemistry; languages; Earth sciences, communication arts; psychology; physics; health and physical education; dance; music; theater; statistics; and civil, computer, electrical, environmental and mechanical engineering.
The teaching laboratories of the departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Earth 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, a computer center and a library, as well as living accommodations for students and faculty. The Fort Burgwin archaeology curation facility houses over one million archaeological specimens from research projects conducted by SMU faculty and students. 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 Taos region.
The N.L. Heroy Science Hall houses the departments of Anthropology, Earth 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 Earth 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 and infrasound stations in southwestern 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; Grenada, Mississippi; and overseas locations. Data collected by the observatory are available to the faculty and advanced students who wish to undertake basic research in seismology, tectonics or infrasound.
- 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. Work in this laboratory is often supplemented by facilities in the Variable Pressure Scanning Electron Microscope Laboratory.
- 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 midcrustal 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 750ºC. There are also 10 cold-seal reaction vessels. In addition, 1 atm furnaces are available that can be used to temperatures of 1400ºC.
- 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 for the Study of Earth and Man, 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 Microscope Laboratory contains a Zeiss SMT 1450 VPSE SEM used for generating electron photomicrographs with 5-nanometer resolution. The SEM Laboratory is open to researchers and students from Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Engineering and Chemistry. The SEM Laboratory 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 Earth Sciences, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences and Engineering.
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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 paintings, 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 children’s art programs 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 a museum store and special event rooms.
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