Departments

The Office of the Dean is responsible for advancing the overall vision and strategic priorities for the University Libraries. We do this by determining budget priorities, overseeing recruitment and hiring activities, engaging our community, executing communication and marketing initiatives, and coordinating development and donor stewardship activities.

Our department also supports the technological needs of our students, faculty, staff and other patrons. This includes providing hardware and software for computing and printing, maintaining servers, offering end-user training, and delivering innovative technologies.

The Instruction and Outreach department helps the WMU community learn how to find and use information in order to make informed decisions and solve problems. Our subject librarians can consult with you in person or online to help connect you with the library resources critical to your research, teaching or learning.

We create and maintain tools such as subject and course guides, videos and tutorials. Our department also works with faculty to provide instruction for classes, customized for the research assignments students are required to complete.

Research Services facilitates the research activities of WMU and the global community through collections, educational programs and services. We curate specialized and unique physical collections consisting of archives and regional history, special collections and rare books, and maps. 

We have experts who identify, digitize and preserve original materials and make these items available online. Our data librarian provides support at all stages of the data life cycle through consultations and workshops. Our maps specialist can help you create maps and graphics to include in research and teaching projects.

Research Services also maintains and promotes ScholarWorks, the institutional repository that houses thousands of research and scholarly papers from the WMU community.

Resource Management includes cataloging, processing and electronic resources management. We are responsible for the acquisition, processing and discovery of the Libraries’ vast collections and resources in all formats. This means making sure that all of our different platforms work together and share information.

We create lots of original metadata and finding aids so that you can find and access the resources you need through Library Search.

User Services is the first point of contact for any of your needs at University Libraries. Whether it’s helping you locate items in the library or online, facilitating document delivery, Interlibrary Loan or MeLCat requests, or managing course and textbook reserves, we’re here to help. User Services is also here to assist you with public computing and printing in our libraries.

Come see us at the service desk. We look forward to meeting you!