Discovering the Treasures of Carroll College Library in Helena, Montana

The Carroll College Library, also known as the Corette Library, stands as a cornerstone of academic and research support for the students, faculty, and staff of Carroll College. More than just a repository of books, it's a dynamic hub that facilitates class and research success through its specialized information resources and robust librarian-led research support. This article delves into the rich resources and services offered by the Corette Library, exploring its diverse collections, archives, and commitment to open access.

A Central Hub for Research and Learning

The Corette Library plays a crucial role in supporting the curriculum of Carroll College by providing access to a wide range of materials. While the college emphasizes teaching, the library also strives to support faculty research as the budget allows, primarily through database searches and interlibrary loan services.

Collection Growth and Priorities

The library's collection development policy prioritizes materials that support the current teaching programs of the college. It also includes general reference works and materials in fields not directly related to college programs but are of such importance that they belong in any respectable scholarly library. Furthermore, the library aims to support the faculty's research needs and assist administrative personnel in effectively performing their duties. It also seeks to support cooperative programs with other libraries or academic institutions and form a foundation collection in support of anticipated programs of the college and appropriate varieties of recreational materials, as funds permit.

Criteria for Acquiring Materials

When selecting materials for acquisition, the library considers several factors, including the lasting value of the content, the appropriateness of the level of treatment, the strength of current holdings in similar subject areas, and the demonstrated demand for the material. Cost, suitability of format to content, authority of the author, reputation of the publisher or source, and reviews in subject-specific and standard library reviewing sources are also taken into account.

Recommendations and Gifts

Faculty, staff, administration, and students are encouraged to suggest items for purchase. The library director has the final decision on purchases, which are made through approved library vendors. When selecting materials for acquisition, the library considers audience, reviews, cost, subject balance, and representation of diverse viewpoints. Items given to the library are added to the collection at the discretion of the library staff. The library only accepts unconditional gifts.

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Accessing a Wealth of Digital Resources

The Corette Library provides access to an extensive array of digital resources, catering to diverse academic disciplines. These resources include:

  • Agricultural & Environmental Science Collection: Offers full-text titles (1960-present) from around the world, including scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings, and government publications.

  • American Chemical Society Web Editions: Provides access to 63 American Chemical Society journals that cover medicinal chemistry, natural chemistry, organic chemistry, and more.

  • American Civil War (1861-1865): Offers a multitude of primary sources that highlights 2,009 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of diaries, letters, and memoirs regarding the Emancipation Proclamation, Battle of Gettysburg, and more.

  • American Newsreels in Video: A collection of over 1,700 US videos perfect for historians and journalists seeking content originally broadcast between 1929-1946.

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  • American Periodicals: Gives access to historic periodicals (1740-1940) with content ranging from special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.

  • Art & Architecture Archive: Full-text magazine archive covering art and architecture. Subjects include fine art, decorative arts, architecture, interior design, industrial design, and photography.

  • ATLA Religion Database: An index to journal articles, book reviews, and collections of essays in all fields of religion and theology from 1818-present.

  • Black Historical Newspapers: This digital archive of news media provides comprehensive coverage of the African American experience (education, laws and legislation, literature, etc.) and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media from the early 18th century to the present day. Records are sourced from American and global news sources, including over 400 current and historical Black publications.

  • Black Thought and Culture: Covers non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material.

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  • BMC Chemistry: An open access, peer reviewed journal that publishes in the diverse field of chemistry, ranging from organic, inorganic and physical chemistry to medicinal and analytical contributions, as well as articles covering chemistry in the fields of environment and energy, materials and macromolecules, agriculture and food, and green and sustainable processes.

  • Border and Migration Studies Online: Helps students and researchers understand today’s world through primary source documents, archives, films, and ephemera related to significant border areas and events from the 19th to 21st centuries.

  • British Women's Diaries and Letters: This collection includes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women (including Catherine Seymour, Mary Queen of Scots, Jane Austen, and others), as revealed in over 100,000 pages of diaries and letters, spanning more than 300 years.

  • British Periodicals: Full text of historic British periodicals (Late 17th Century to early 20th Century). Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.

  • Business Source Complete: Information available includes case studies, company profiles, conference papers, reports, analysis, working papers, and other industry information.

  • Carroll Scholars: The repository is a service of the Carroll College library. Research and scholarly output included here has been selected and deposited by the individual departments and centers on campus.

  • Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP): Government publications, 1976-present, many in full text.

  • CINAHL Complete: Provides broad content coverage including 50 nursing specialties, speech and language pathology, nutrition, general health and medicine and more. Access includes full-text journals, evidence-based care sheets, quick lessons, and more.

  • Civil War Era: Collection of regional newspapers and pamphlets covering a vast range of topics including the formative economic factors and other forces that led to the abolitionist movement, the 600,000 battle casualties and the emancipation of nearly 4 million slaves.

  • Colonial State Papers: Manuscript papers and bibliographic records concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

  • Congress.gov: Includes federal Bills, Resolutions, Activity in Congress, Congressional Record, Schedules, Calendars, Committee Information, Presidential Nominations, Treaties, and Government Resources.

  • ProQuest Congressional: Allows you to explore Congress in action with the most comprehensive online resource available for congressional publications and legislative research. You can perform in-depth research in public policy, historical, and legal areas of interest. Selected House and Senate hearings for the 85th Congress forward. The House and Senate appropriations hearings for fiscal year 1998 forward are also included. Documents are available as text and PDF.

  • Congressional Research Service Reports (CRS): CRS experts assist at every stage of the legislative process, from the early considerations that precede bill drafting, through committee hearings and floor debate, to the oversight of enacted laws and various agency activities.

  • Coronavirus Research Database: Including coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak, this database curates openly available content related to coronaviruses. It includes thousands of open-access articles from the world’s leading publishers as well as current research from pre-print repositories such as arXiv.

  • County Business Patterns (CBP): From Census Bureau Data. CBP is an annual series that provides subnational economic data by industry. This series includes the number of establishments, employment during the week of March 12, first quarter payroll, and annual payroll.

  • County Business Patterns (CBP): From Census Bureau Data (1967-2007). Summary statistics on employment and payroll for business establishments. The CBP files provide data on the total number of establishments, mid-March employment, first quarter and annual payroll, and the number of establishments by employment-size class for all business establishments with one or more paid employees.

  • Dance in Video: The only collection of curated primary and secondary full-text materials to support informed performance, pedagogy, and scholarship in dance. This collection provides historical context of 20th and 21st century dance through 150,000 pages of exclusive photographs, correspondence, magazines, dance notation, and reference material.

  • Digital National Security Archive: policy toward critical world events - including their military, intelligence, diplomatic and human rights dimensions - from 1945 to the present.

  • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to open access, peer-reviewed journals.

  • Disability in the Modern World: Contains primary and secondary source materials ranging in scope from media studies to philosophy.

  • Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980: Collection of primary source documents from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), shedding light on diplomatic history throughout the 20th C. It is based on three print series which form a record of British peacetime diplomacy since the end of the 19th C: British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898-1914, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1918-1939 and Documents on British Policy Overseas.

  • Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment: Documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women.

  • Early Modern Books: Covers material from the British Isles and Europe for the period 1450-1700.

  • Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU): Country reports for almost 200 countries. Each report presents detailed statistics alongside expert commentary and forecasting from the EIU’s analysts. This database presents the historical reports from 1952-1995.

  • Education Collection: An archive of magazines in the field of education, ranging from the early 20th to 21st centuries. The publications are aimed at teachers and other educational professionals and constitute valuable primary sources through which the evolution of educational policy, practice, and theory during this period may be delineated and interpreted. This content also pertains strongly to several related fields such as social history, psychology, and childhood studies.

  • Energy Citations Database (EECD): Bibliographic records for energy and energy-related scientific and technical information from the Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies, the Energy Research & Development Administration (ERDA) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).

  • Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive: An archival research resource containing the key periodicals for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries (including music, broadcasting, theatre, and video games), from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to the 21st century.

  • Environment Complete: This collection offers coverage in applicable areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more.

  • ERIC (EBSCO): Education related database. Content includes journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, dissertations and theses, and books dating back to 1966.

  • European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750: A free archive of indexed publications related to the Americas and written in Europe before 1750. It includes thousands of valuable primary source records covering the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of Native American peoples.

  • FBI Records Vault: Contains 6,700 FBI documents and other media that have been released to the public.

  • Gender Studies Database: Indexes articles from >500 journals that relate to women, gender, sexuality in medieval Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

  • Film Scripts Online: The Film Scripts Online Series contains over 1,100 scripts and makes available, for the first time, accurate and authorized versions of copyrighted screenplays. Now film scholars can compare the writer’s vision with the producer’s and director’s interpretations from page to screen.

  • Food Studies Online: Coverage includes: Organic Farming/Small Farms, School lunch programs, Childhood nutrition, Marketing and advertising, Packaging, Food industry, Environmental impact of GMOs, US food programs during WWI/WWII, Food security, Famine, and more.

  • Global Plants: JSTOR's Global Plants is a database of plant-type specimens, reference works, and primary sources (diaries, correspondence, illustrations, photographs) and is an essential resource for research in botany, ecology, and conservation studies.

  • Govinfo: Government documents.

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