User:PSOBrien/sandbox/Montana State University Library

Montana State University Library (MSU Library) is the main academic library of Montana State University and is located in Bozeman, Montana. The MSU Library supports the research and information needs of students, academic faculty and the community of Montana. The MSU Library Special Collections and Archives house more than 34,000 volumes and 1,200 linear feet of original manuscript materials, historical documents, and photographs of Yellowstone National Park and Native American People of Montana. The library also maintains an open access institutional repository called ScholarWorks that captures the scholarly communication of Montana State University

History
The Montana College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts began library collection development in January 1894, about seven months after the Montana State University was founded. The first librarians were either students or instructors assigned to the duty part time, but shortly after the collections were moved to the southwest corner of the main administration building in 1896, Mabel Ruth Owens became the first professional to oversee the library. The library was moved to the second floor of Montana Hall in 1927, but the collection did not get a building of its own until the end of 1949 after construction of an 8,894 square foot facility described by then University Librarian Lesley M. Heathcote as “not especially inspiring to look at.”    After the transfer of nearly 100,000 volumes from various locations around campus the library officially opened its doors on January 9, 1950. In August 1960 construction began on a new 125,000 square foot addition adjacent to the west side of the older building. The basement and first floor of the new section were opened on January 3, 1962 and the entire four story addition was occupied by November 1966. Seismic bracing and significant remodeling were completed in 2002, adding dormers to the attic of the original building to provide additional individual and group study space. Significant remodeling in 2011 transformed the first floor of the 1966 addition to establish the Information Commons, equipped with movable furniture, multiple computer stations, and portable classroom equipment. On October 14, 1978, the Montana State University library was officially named for Roland R. Renne, the school’s sixth president.

Collections
The Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections of the Libraries at Montana State University is located in the Burton K. Wheeler reading room on the second floor of the Montana State University Renne Library. Special Collections assembles primary and secondary scholarly materials on specific topics supporting Montana State University research needs in history, culture,and environmental studies. Areas of collecting emphasis are: The reading room itself is named after Senator Burton K. Wheeler, arguably one of the most prominent national politicians of the New Deal era, and the manuscript materials pertaining to him and his immediate family are the most complete extant.[c]
 * Yellowstone National Park - including the original 1870 Yellowstone exploration journal and 1876 Snake River exploration journal of Lt. Gustavus C. Doane, 2nd U.S. Cavalry.
 * The Yellowstone ecosystem - need description
 * Trout and Salmonids - one of the largest such research facilities in the United States, holding over 34,000 books, periodicals, and “gray” literature titles. Including the scientific research papers of Dr. Robert L. Behnke and the personal papers of prominent fly fishing sportsmen such as Bud Lilly.
 * Montana agriculture and ranching - need description
 * Regional Native Americans - need description
 * Montana engineering and architecture - containing more than 2,800 individual drawing sets that represent building projects from every corner of the state.
 * Prominent Montanans including U.S. Senator Burton K. Wheeler, F. Jay Haynes, Jack E. Haynes, Merrill G. Burlingame, and James Willard Schultz.

Institutional repository Scholarworks collects the Scholarly output of the Montana State University Bozeman - update with scholarworks description.

University Archives
Manuscript records of Montana State University, including photographic images and vertical file information, are available for research. The archives consists of 1,728 cubic feet of office files, official correspondence, reports, and other records generated by the various subdivisions of the institution since its founding in 1893. Additional record groups are continuously added to the archives as the staff processes them, and item or serial level cataloging is provided for the numerous publications by the University and its faculty and staff.