North Carolina's libraries: their role: statements of mission and purpose

              Four- Year College and University Libraries
At Left, Reading Room, Hunter Library, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee. Photo by Harry' Duke, Western Carolina University, Office of
Public Information. Right, Student studying in E.H. Little Library'. Davidson College, Davidson. Pholo by News Bureau, Davidson College.
MISSION
To support the teaching, research, and public serice pro-grams
of the college or university.
The Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association,
which accredits colleges and universities in this region, states that
"because the library is essential to learning, each institution must
have a library which provides the primary and secondary
materials needed to support its purposes and programs"
(Criteria for Accreditation, 1983, p. 47). The mission of the col-lege
or university library is thus derived from the mission and
programs of the institution itself. All colleges and universities
provide programs in the liberal arts, but each may also have
distinctive graduate and professional programs. At the
bachelor's degree level the emphasis is on teaching. At the
graduate and professional degree level (e.g., master's and doc-toral
study), the emphasis is upon professional training and
research. Thus, a library that supports only an undergraduate
program will differ significantly from a research library, which
may support doctoral study in many fields.
Priorities for acquiring materials and establishing services will
be dependent upon the institutional purpose. A college with a
student body comprised of commuting adults from a variety of
backgrounds will differ from one whose student body is
homogeneous and housed on campus. Normally support for
faculty research will be less important in an undergraduate col-lege
than in a research university. However, all academic
libraries must have an adequate collection of books and other
materials in a readily accessible building, which encourages max-imum
use by the campus community.
Objective I
SUPPORTING THE INSTRUCTIONAL
AND RESEARCH PROGRAMS
To select and acquire materials that support the instructional
programs ofthe college or university and to ensure the continued
development and preservation of distinctive materials for
research.
LI. Support of instructional programs.
Every college or university must have a basic working collec-tion
of reference books, standard texts and magazines, and sup-plementary
materials that reflect the emphasis of the specific
courses offered. For instance, one should expect to find that the
library of Belmont Abbey College emphasizes religious studies;
Bennett College, black studies; UNC Greensboro, women's
studies; and North Carolina State University, agriculture and
engineering. All, however, would have many of the same basic
reference works and standard magazines. These resources
should encourage the pursuit of knowledge and have sufficient
depth to stimulate intellectual curiosity.
1.2. Support of research programs.
Institutions that offer graduate or professional degrees require
a much larger collection of the world's literature than those that
confine their programs to the bachelor's degree. Research
libraries contain not only the basic bibliographies and books in
each degree field but also major periodicals in related disciplines.
In addition to the basic reference works and standard
periodicals, these libraries need primary source materials,
background materials, annotated and revised editions, publica-