The St. John's University Libraries' collections – in libraries
across all five campuses – contain more than 1.5 million items,
including books, periodicals, microfilm, microfiche and audiovisual
materials, all supportive of the undergraduate and graduate
programs of the University. The guidelines by which the Libraries
acquire and retain items in the collections are detailed in the
Collection Development Policy Statement.
The Main Library is a selective depository for
U.S. government
documents and also houses such collections as the Chin Ying
Asian Library, containing an excellent selection of Asian-language
materials as well as English materials supporting Asian Studies;
the Reference Art File, a unique collection containing thousands of
art exhibition and auction catalogs from the late 1960s through the
early 1980s; the
Media Center,
containing a wide variety of video, CDs, interactive CD-ROMs and
A-V hardware; an
Instructional
Materials Center, containing pre-K-12 curriculum materials;
Special
Collections, which includes the Governor Hugh L. Carey
Collection as well as the William M. Fischer Lawn Tennis Library;
and the
University
Archives.
Other St. John's libraries also have specialized collections that
support the curricula on their campuses. In particular, these
include the
Rittenberg Law
Library on the Queens campus and the
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom
Davis Library on the Manhattan campus.
In addition to traditional physical materials, computer terminals
located throughout each library provide access to a wide variety of
electronic resources. These include the catalogs of the St. John's
Libraries; the catalogs of more than two dozen consortium
libraries; bibliographic and electronic full-text databases; and
much more. These
resources
are available both on and off campus via the world wide web. In
addition, cooperative arrangements with other libraries provide
regional, national and international access to materials through
Interlibrary
Services.