K-State Libraries provide expertise, research assistance and 21st-century technology for students and faculty.
Universitywide research services
Since its inception in 1863, K-State’s Library system has been the core of Kansas State University. From its vast research options to its multiple branches, K-State Libraries remain at the forefront of academic research and resources.
“K-State Libraries provide a wide variety of services which can be broken down into three categories,” said Darchelle Martin, director of communications and marketing for K-State Libraries. “Collections provide access to resources and research materials for all K-State faculty, staff and students. Study areas provide technology, collaborative environments, and quiet areas where students can concentrate on their work. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, K-State Libraries provide expertise. Our faculty and staff support teaching, research and instruction across all disciplines in addition to other services like support for K-State faculty’s scholarly communication efforts and university records management.”
“The research librarians who assisted me to conduct of my own research helped me find not only resources here at K-State but from other university libraries as well,” said Chuck Sexton, graduate student in international security studies.
K-State Libraries has multiple branches that excel in research, collections and academic study. Beyond its most well-known commodity, Hale Library, K-State Libraries’ other branches provide many research and collection options for students to explore. The Manhattan campus houses a math and physics library located in Cardwell Hall, a veterinary medicine library located on Denison Avenue, and the Paul Weigel Library of Architecture, Planning & Design located in Regnier Hall. These branches of K-State Libraries provide a narrower focus of research options that relate to the subjects of the colleges they are housed in. K-State Libraries extends to the K-State Polytechnic campus where students have all the available staff and resources that the Manhattan branches offer. K-State strives to give students all they need to succeed, and K-State Libraries is no exception.
Hale Library fire and recovery
On May 22, 2018, Hale Library experienced a devastating fire that damaged the collections and most of the contents of the building, the fire produced a sadness within Hale staff who felt as though their very life blood had been burned out of them.
However, even in what seemed to be the darkest of times, a light was found, which illustrated what Michael Haddock, acting dean of K-State Libraries believes is Hale Library’s greatest asset to Kansas State University, the dedication of its staff to their job and their campus.
“Our staff have always been very customer service oriented, but I could not have been prouder of their dedication and resilience through three years of post-fire recovery with the added stress of dealing with a pandemic during the past year,” Haddock said. “Through all this, they maintained a very high-quality level of service to the K-State community. K-State Libraries would not be what it is without its genuinely dedicated staff.”
Hale Library looks to continue to renovate and innovate in new and exciting ways.
“The future of Hale Library is really bright,” Haddock said. “There are few libraries anywhere that are able to occupy fully renovated and updated spaces. Granted, we would never have chosen for this to happen in the way it did, but the fire disaster enabled the planning and creation of truly state-of-the-art spaces. We now have highly popular and heavily used group collaboration spaces, a fully curated book collection, and new instructional and event spaces. I am personally most excited about the opening of the Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab, which will provide makerspaces and virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence creation capabilities to the entire campus.”
Philanthropy has been a part of K-State Libraries for many years, and it continues to be vital to the library’s success. “The post-fire renovation of Hale Library could not have been accomplished without the generous support from the K-State family,” Haddock said. “We would not have been able to include many features without significant philanthropic assistance from the K-State community. We received hundreds of individual contributions, as well as major donor gifts. Without the outpouring of philanthropic generosity, the Everitt Learning Commons, Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab, Butler Digitization Lab, Joyce and Joe’s Cornerstone Café, Friends of K-State Libraries Instruction Room, and the Virginia Carlson Family Reading Room, along with multiple other collaboration rooms would not have come to fruition. The KSU Foundation greatly facilitated these efforts, and we cannot express enough appreciation for that assistance!”
To support K-State Libraries contact Heather Strafuss heathers@ksufoundation.org, or 785-775-2146
By James Dalton Burton
