Rensselaer Architecture Library
History
Organization of School:
The School of Architecture is one of five schools at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Rensselaer is the nation's
oldest technological university. A nonsectarian, coeducational
institution, the university offers degrees from five schools:
Engineering, Science, Architecture, Humanities, Arts and Social
Sciences, and the Lally School of Management and Technology, as
well as interdisciplinary degrees in information technology.
More than 140 degree programs in nearly 60 fields lead to
bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees.
Programs:
The School of Architecture offers bachelor's, master's and PhD
programs. Foremost among them are the five-year Bachelor of
Architecture (B. Arch) and the three-and-a-half-year Master of
Architecture (M. Arch I). The School also offers the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in Architectural Sciences. The master's and
doctoral degrees in science and architectural sciences are
research oriented programs with concentrations in Built
Ecologies, Architectural Acoustics, and Lighting. .
Primary Population (2007-2008):
23 FTE architecture faculty
58 graduate students
301 undergraduate students
History of the Architecture Library:
The Architecture Library's collection was begun in 1929 and
the branch facility established in 1930. It now occupies
approximately 4700 square feet on the east side of the Greene
Building's third floor. The physical collection has grown to
32,000 print titles housed in the facility and over 117,000
slides. The visual resources collections now include an
increasing number of digitized images (50,000), and multi-media
material on architecture, design and the visual arts, as well
as traditional maps, drawings, prints, photographs and
microform collections. The library frequently receives a
Capital District Library Council grant to purchase
architectural materials. These funds have enabled the
architecture librarian to purchase materials of a more popular
nature for various age groups and to serve a diverse group of
users throughout the Capital District.
Because the Architecture Library is one of Rensselaer's
libraries it also shares in an incredibly rich collection of
resources in both print and electronic formats. While Folsom
Library serves as the central library, the Architecture Library
supports the School of Architecture programs. The total
collections now number one-half million volumes of books on
open-access shelves, as well as scholarly journals, technical
reports, government-document series and multi-media material.
The Web gateway for the libraries, called RensSearch, provides
online access to thousands of electronic books and full text
journals and nearly 300 research databases and reference
resources. The Rensselaer community can access many of these
resources both on and off campus. Increased participation in
library consortia and their sponsored programs, such as
ConnectNY, now facilitates access to the collections of other
libraries and enables our users to borrow materials expediently
from other participant libraries in the state.