Buswell Memorial Library, named for J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., third president of the College, provides support for the College's programs of instruction and offers a quiet, comfortable study center for the campus community.
Collections include books, journals, video and sound recordings, maps, scores, and educational curriculum materials. The Library's holdings comprise nearly one million items, making it one of the largest liberal arts college libraries in the state of Illinois. Materials not owned by the Library may be borrowed through local consortial arrangements or through the Library's participation in an international interlibrary loan network. In addition, Wheaton students may borrow materials directly at several dozen colleges and universities in Chicago and the surrounding area, upon presentation of their College ID card.
The Library offers several types of study areas to meet student needs or inclinations: traditional study carrels, larger tables, reading areas, and group study rooms equipped with audio-visual equipment. Students are able to draw upon print and electronic resources together in the Library's Learning Commons. Students may also bring personal laptop computers into the Library and connect them to the campus network and ResNet using ports provided throughout the building.
Students identify suitable resources for their assignments by using the online catalog and the many research database that the Library provides. The Library subscribes to approximately 1,500 journals in paper format and several thousand more are supplied in full text online. The Library catalog is available on the Internet, and online materials, including electronic course reserve readings, are available to students on any computer connected to the campus network or by proxy server off campus. Instruction in library research methods is provided in classes or may be arranged individually with a librarian. The reference desk is staffed with professional librarians sixty-four hours a week.
Each year the Library acquires new resources in subjects studied at the College. Library faculty work closely with the academic departments to ensure that the collection grows in focused ways to meet student and faculty needs. The growth of the College's advanced degree programs has intensified collection development over the last several years. Generous support from friends of the College is enabling the Buswell Library to increase substantially the depth and quality of its holdings particularly in the fields of biblical and theological studies.
In addition to its main collections, the Buswell Library provides extensive resources in support of the Conservatory of Music: recordings, scores, and music reference books and journals. There are listening stations and a conducting practice room available. Buswell Library also serves as a selective depository for federal government publications, a status it has held since 1964.
The Library is especially proud of its archival and special collections which contain the personal papers of writers Madeleine L'Engle, Frederick Buechner, Malcolm Muggeridge, and many others, the institutional papers of evangelical societies, materials from the College's history, the Evangelism and Missions Collection, rare book collections, and the Batson Shakespeare Collection. In addition to supporting focused research, professors regularly draw upon these collections for undergraduate course enrichment. Special Collections is located on the third floor of the Billy Graham Center. More information is available on the Special Collections web site.
