Mission Statement

The mission of the WSU Vancouver Library is to provide an environment which cultivates learning and supports the diverse academic pursuits of the WSU Vancouver students, faculty, and staff.

History
Washington State University began offering courses in Southwest Washington in 1983 as part of the Southwest Washington Joint Center for Education. In 1989, the University formally established Washington State University Vancouver as a branch campus of the state's land-grant institution. The university was then housed in Bauer Hall on the Clark Community College Campus in downtown Vancouver, Washington. The library consisted of one room in Bauer Hall at that time. By necessity the collection was small but drew upon the resources of WSU in Pullman, making WSU Vancouver library a “just in time” provider of information placing it on the cutting edge of what has become a common practice in library service.

The Institution and the Library
The Salmon Creek campus opened in 1996. Set on a hilltop with an expansive view of Mt Hood, Mt St. Helens and Mt Adams, the WSUV campus serves a student body of approximately two thousand students in undergraduate and graduate programs. WSU Vancouver offers14 Bachelor's degrees, 9 Master's degrees, 1 Doctorate degree, and more than 35 fields of study.

To serve the students, faculty and staff of the university the WSU Vancouver branch campus the library collection presently has over 20,000 book titles and 9,000 print and electronic journal subscriptions. Business, education, psychology, humanities and nursing are the primary subjects covered. WSU Vancouver's library has more than 800 journals in hardcopy and over 9,000 fulltext online journals and newspapers, a core collection of more than 20,000 books and access to more than 100 major bibliographic databases. In addition to the WSU library collections, WSU Vancouver library participates in several local and regional library consortia, including the Portland Area Library System and ORBIS/CASCADE (the Oregon and Washington Cooperative Library Project).

The library is under the umbrella of Vancouver Information Services along with the Information Technology and Videoconference Services. The library is housed in the lower of floor of The Library Building with an area for student computer use, a study area with a view of Mt Hood and campus art installations, group study rooms and access to one of three campus computer labs. There is also a reading room that is used for regular cookie breaks during finals and campus lecture and discussion groups.

Librarians also have a strong presence in the classroom. They teach classes in Research, Information Ethics and Usability in the Digital Technology and Culture Program in addition to Information Literacy classes in partnership with teaching faculty. This last year librarians have added teaching General Education classes to their instruction program as the campus has expanded to include first and second year students.

With the collections of eleven Washington State University Libraries to draw on as well as consortia collections, the WSU Vancouver library continues the “just in time” model with service as the distinguishing quality of the library and its staff. There is also a strong value placed on collaboration with the Vancouver community and regional academic and historical institutions.

The library houses the Environmental Information Cooperative Library that serves the Clark County Community in environmental education, natural resource protection and conservation, waste reduction and recycling and water resource management.

The Columbia River Basin Ethnic History Archive (CRBEHA) is a project of Washington State University Vancouver, the Idaho State Historical Society, Oregon Historical Society, Washington State Historical Society, and Washington State University Pullman. The digital collection brings together selected highlights of the ethnic collection of repositories in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington to tell the story of the region’s ethnic groups. CRBEHA also provides tutorials on how to research and interpret library and museum resources, and encourages public dialogue about ethnic history sources and issues in its online discussion forum. At this time WSU Vancouver and the Clark County Historical Society are working together to digitize a selection from the one hundred and fifty items donated to the Historical Society by the NAACP. The items date back to the late 1940’s and include programs, photographs, manuscripts and scrapbooks. These primary documents will be added to the CRBEHA archives.

In addition to providing a place to study and to access information the library encourages the WSU Vancouver academic community to use the library space as a place of discourse. In the last year the library has been an increased presence in the intellectual life of the campus. In collaboration with the campus writing center the library has hosted Literacy for a Changing World which are forums led by an expert in a topic area related to writing and literacy. In addition the library has also hosted the Many Voices, One Nation reading events in conjunction with National Library Week, an initiative of American Library Association. The library also houses a rotating display of diverse art from local artists in display cases throughout the library. These exhibits are organized and presented by the campus diversity council. Service and collaboration in an environment of diversity and learning make the library a place student, faculty and staff enjoy and appreciate on the campus of WSU Vancouver.