Gonzaga University is a private, four-year comprehensive university. It is owned and operated by the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church. Gonzaga's educational philosophy is based on the 450-year Ignatian model that aims to educate the whole person--mind, body and spirit--an integration of science and art, faith and reason, action and contemplation. At Gonzaga, "cura personalis," or care for the individual, is our guiding theme. Gonzaga is named after a young 16th-century Italian Jesuit, Aloysius Gonzaga, who died in Rome trying to save young people from the plague. He was later named the patron saint of youth.

Gonzaga University was founded in 1887 and, 117 years later, the fall 2004 enrollment is 6,100 students in 92 undergraduate and 21 graduate programs. Located in Spokane, Washington, Gonzaga's campus is situated on 108 acres along the beautiful Spokane River, within a 10-minute walk of downtown Spokane. Spokane has a population of 190,000 within city limits and more than 400,000 in the greater Spokane area.

The first library on Gonzaga's campus was housed in the Administration Building. Father Francis Monroe, in his capacity as prefect of the library, presided over a rectangular room on the second floor measuring approximately 50 by 22 feet. Many librarians would come and go over time. As the collection grew, it was moved around the building until it finally outgrew the available space.

In 1947, Father Corkery discussed with Gonzaga’s famous alumnus Harry L. "Bing" Crosby the construction of a separate building to house the library. As a result of those discussions, the Crosby Library was built at a cost of more than $700,000. It was dedicated on November 3, 1957 as a memorial to the Crosby family. It was a three-story, 33,464 square foot building and served as Gonzaga’s main library until the completion of Foley Center Library in 1992. It was rededicated as the Crosby Student Center in 1993.

Foley Center Library is named in honor of Judge Ralph Foley, Gonzaga alum and Superior Court judge for 34 years, and his wife Helen Higgins Foley, a schoolteacher and daughter of pioneer settlers. Ralph and Helen Foley's son is Thomas S. Foley, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and a Gonzaga alumnus. This 137,000 square foot building offers quiet comfortable seating, wireless internet access, and study areas for over 1,000 users as well as specialized facilities, including a networked computer lab, Teleconference Center, Curriculum Center, and a 24-hour study area.

Also on campus is the Chastek Law Library which serves the law school’s students and faculty. The Gonzaga School of Law is one of three law schools in the state of Washington.

Foley’s on-site resources, one of the largest private academic collections in the Pacific Northwest, are augmented by resource sharing agreements with the region's major research libraries. Foley’s collection is strong in philosophy and theology, two areas that are part of the university core curriculum. These areas were augmented with the acquisition of the Scholastic Library from the Mt. St. Michael’s Jesuit Seminary in 1970. In addition to our strong academic collection, the library also has a small leased popular book collection and a popular video collection for student and staff use.

Foley Library uses the Voyager integrated library system and is a member of the Washington Idaho Network (WIN), a consortium of 73 academic, school, public and special libraries in eastern Washington and Idaho. WIN’s servers and central support office are located on the third floor of Foley. The WIN Support Team is comprised of 4 staff members that provide 24/7 technical support as well as supporting training of WIN library staff members. WIN’s activities are guided by their mission statement:

WIN is a cooperative multi-type library consortium serving academic, public, school, and special libraries in the states of Washington and Idaho. WIN facilitates access to information by acquiring automated systems that serve as gateways to information beyond library walls. Additionally the consortium will plan and implement services that promote inter-library cooperation to insure that resources are readily shared across jurisdictional boundaries. These services enable our patrons to further their education, to enhance their skills in the workplace, to fully function in today's global society, and to enrich and enjoy their daily lives.

Foley Center has a staff of 30 headed by Dr. Eileen Bell-Garrison, Dean of Library Services. There are eight faculty members who have ranked faculty status along with five administrative staff members and sixteen library technicians in three departments, Public Services, Materials Management and Special Collections. The library also employs approximately 40 work study students who help out in processing and at the various service points. Foley Center is open 97 hours a week with many of the night and weekend hours staffed by an MLS trained adjunct faculty.

In addition to the 260,000 walk-in patrons served in 2003/2004, the library serves a large distance education population. Gonzaga offers graduate distance education in education, nursing, and organizational leadership in addition to a number of internet-based undergraduate classes. The distance learning office is responsible for providing information to students who reside in Alaska, British Columbia, Montana, and a variety of other locales. Library instruction is also provided to these students through the use of web-based tutorials, video presentations as well as face to face instruction. Foley’s current collection of 500,000+ bound volumes has room to expand to 700,000. There are extensive holdings in microfilm, CD music recordings, DVD’s, CD’s and videotapes. In the fall of this year, Foley Center opened two new contracted services in the 24-hour student lounge, “Jazzman’s,” an espresso bar operated by Sodexho, and “Paw Prints,” a copy service operated by the university faculty services. Both of these services expand our offerings to our patrons and enhance the library’s reputation as the place to be seen and do research.

 Foley Center's Special Collections Department is housed in the Cowles Reading Room on the third floor. The collection contains volumes dating back to 1475 and is strong in philosophy, theology, labor history, literature, Northwest history, and Victorian poetry. The holdings are available on the online catalog. The manuscript collections include:
• Bing Crosby Collection, entertainer, crooner, and actor
• Gerard Manley Hopkins Collection, English Jesuit Poet
• Hanford Health and Information Archive
• Jay Fox Papers, anarchist and labor radical from Home Colony, Washington
• James O'Sullivan Papers, engineer involved with building the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State

In addition to these collections, the University Archives maintains the photographic, audio/visual, and historic paper records of Gonzaga University. Also housed in the Special Collections areas is the Jesuit Oregon Province Archives (JOPA) which maintains the administrative records generated by the Society of Jesus primarily within its designated territory of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. This includes primary materials, as well as supplemental printed materials, such as books and maps.

Recently added to the Special Collections website is the “Language of the Kalispel: A digitization project of Gonzaga University and the Kalispel Tribe of Indians”. This project is part of the Digital Images Initiative 2001 program sponsored by the Washington State Library. Financial support originated with Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funding, administered at the federal level by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Projects of this nature are designed to foster new collaborations or renew longstanding relationships, as in this case between Gonzaga University and the Kalispel Tribe of Indians. The primary project objective was to digitize, describe and make Internet-accessible the seminal work of Fr. Joseph Giorda, S.J., A Dictionary of the Kalispel or Flat-head Indian Language (St. Ignatius Press, 1877-1879). A secondary objective was to support Fr. Giorda's Dictionary with approximately 800-900 digitized pages of similar Kalispel language resources housed in Gonzaga University's Foley Library, Special Collections Department.

Kathleen O'Connor is the Assistant Dean for Library Systems at Gonzaga University and a former Secretary/Treasurer of ACRL Washington.
Linda Pierce is the Chair of Public Services and Collection Development Librarian at Gonzaga University and our current Past President.