The University of Tennessee Libraries

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he University of Tennessee Libraries are a service organization. They serve faculty and students as a primary clientele, but they also serve individuals and the entire State and region as the largest publicly assisted library in Tennessee. Through alliances, partnerships, and consortia, the collections and services of the Libraries are extended to other institutions elsewhere in Tennessee and the constituencies they serve. Collections and services are made available in the well-known John C. Hodges Library and five branch libraries. The total staff number 221, of which 49 are professional librarians.
      The UT Libraries constitute a large research lebrary and are a member of the Association of Research Libraries, the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries, and other national and international agencies and associations. Such memberships bring access to research collections world-wide, traditional and electronic, and offer opportunities to cooperate with other libraries at the national level in shaping means to satisfy the needs of an information-hungry world. The UT Libraries make their collections available through interlibrary loan to citizens through their local library. Each year, for instance, the Libraries lend about 8,000 books to other libraries.
     Meeting the needs of faculty and students on campus is not strictly a local matter in the electronic age. The Libraries reach out to other collections and information sources and, in turn, are involved in activities with various communities to extend the Libraries rich resources to those who need them in the State and region.

Outreach Programs & Projects
U.S. Government Documents Repository: Receiving selected government documents in paper or electronic form free of cost, the Libraries are obliged and eager to make them available to all citizens. The documents unit also acquires selected publications from the Tennessee State government and from international agencies. A specially trained librarian and staff assist users in finding information published as official documents, whether what is needed is a publication sitting on a shelf or is acquired via computer.

The Tennessee Newspaper Project: In a project funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Libraries are responsible for identifying, cataloging and microfilming all existing Tennessee newspapers. The existence of many newspapers otherwise "hidden away" will be made known and their intellectual content preserved on microfilm for everyone when the project is completed. The Tennessee Newspaper Project is part of a nationwide plan to identify local papers and to preserve them.

Use of the UT Libraries: The UT Libraries are, in a very real sense, a resource for all citizens to use. Anyone can use materials and services on location. Borrowing priviledges can be arranged with the purchase of a "Subscriber's Card." Reference service is offered by telephone, in person and via the Internet to everyone. Citizens and many professional and business people avail themselves of these services in some form every day. An increasingly important public asset is the Libraries' Web site. The Libraries' catalog, some databases, and pointers to other electronic resources are available to anyone who accesses the site. Increasingly, it is a gateway for the world to the Libraries' resources.

The Center for Children's and Young Adult Literature: Established in 1999, The Center is a collaborative effort with other University academic departments, public school systems, and the Knox County Public Library System. Its public programs, featuring national figures in children's and young adult literature, and its collection of materials, housed in the Hodges Library, are designed to aid parents and those involved in teaching or providing library service to young people.

Digital Library Center: The Libraries have received funding from the University to establish a center to digitize materials and to develop new ways to utilize digital materials in teaching and learning. When the Center is fully operational, many of the digital resources that are created will be valued locally and globally online. The Center will become a kind of laboratory to determine best practices for digitizing material, using them, and making them available to the world. The Libraries already have experience in digitization. In a cooperative venture with the University of Georgia Library, the UT Libraries have digitized texts and images of Native American history (particularly of the Cherokee Nation) and made them available universally via the Internet. The actual documents are housed in the libraries of the University of Tennessee and the University of Georgia, UT's McClung Museum, and the Tennessee State Library and Archives. These primary resource materials should be of special interest to K-12 teachers, students, scholars and the general public. As an extension of this technology to make resources available to the world, the Libraries have proposed mounting images and documents about the history of Tennessee in the same way.

Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project: The Libraries have a major project underway in support of the documentary history of the Great Smoky Mountains. A multi-year program to acquire materials and to compile an exhaustive bibliography, to be published by The University of Tennessee Press, is underway. The intent is to establish a major collection of materials of all types related to the Smokies so that there is in the Libraries a center for scholars, students, K-12 teachers and other interested persons to study all aspects of this important Appalachian region.

Writer in Residence: Now in its third year, the Libraries' Writer in Residence program continues to create an important bridge between the Libraries and the creative writers of the area, whether seasoned or neophyte. The writers speak at public programs throughout the area about writing, their works and their role as a library Writer in Residence.

The Friends Dr. and Mrs. A. H. Lancaster Lectures: In an effort to give something valuable to the surrounding community and to establish relationships with members of the public interested in the library or creative achievement, the University of Tennessee Library Friends offer a series of lectures each year, featuring writers, playwrights or other accomplished artists. The series' name honors the Lancasters who started an endowment for the lectures. The public is always invited and admission is free.

Tennessee Electronic Library (TEL) and Tenn-Share: The UT Libraries were a key participant in the state-wide effort to establish an electronic library of databases that would be available to all Tennesseans, citizen users, K-12 teachers and students, and public and academic libraries. Funded by the General Assembly, TEL provides democratic access to information that otherwise might not be available to all the people of Tennessee. The UT Libraries continue to play an important role in the guidance and improvement of TEL. UT Libraries also play a leadership role in Tenn-Share, the coordinating agency for Tennessee libraries.

Contact
Office of the Dean
The University of Tennessee Libraries
608 Hodges Library
Knoxville, TN 37996-1000
Phone: (865) 974-4127