A performance panel discussion will be hosted October 8 at Noon at The Vanderbilt Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, located at 1207 18th Avenue, South, 37212; with the Company actors and Vanderbilt Performance Art students. The event promises to be memorable as the topic of Censorship in the Arts is explored in both historic and contemporary witty terms as Vanderbilt’s Department of Art Performance students incorporate the Vanderbilt Library as a field lab for modern censorship studies. Check Website for more details.

Library Annex service for periodical article requests has been enhanced. We now offer email delivery of articles, within a four-hour window of receipt, Monday – Friday, until 4:30 p.m. The form for requesting articles to be faxed from periodicals housed at the Annex has been revised. The form is now a request for articles to be emailed. This form is linked from the Acorn catalog records of periodical volumes housed at the Annex. Upon submitting a request for a periodical article, patrons are given a choice of the volume being delivered to a service desk or receiving the article as a pdf.

Banned Books Week September 26 - October 3, 2009

“Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate; and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of the work, and the viewpoints of both the author and receiver of information. Freedom to express oneself through a chosen mode of communication, including the Internet, becomes virtually meaningless if access to that information is not protected. Intellectual freedom implies a circle, and that circle is broken if either freedom of expression or access to ideas is stifled.”
Intellectual Freedom Manual (ALA, 7th edition)

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents an exhibition titled Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris from September 10, 2009 – January 3, 2010. This exhibition has borrowed many books from the Pascal Pia Collection, from the Library’s W.T. Bandy Center.  For more information about the Twilight Visions exhibition, please see http://www.fristcenter.org/site/exhibitions/exhibitiondetail.aspx?cid=688

The Library has completed negotiations with an external service to provide catalog records for our Arabic language materials, enabling us to add records for these materials to our catalog for the first time.  By outsourcing cataloging to Arabic language experts,  the library will be able to make information about our growing collection in this important area of study available to the scholarly community.

While the materials are out being cataloged, temporary records will appear in Acorn. Requests for the materials during that time will be saved until their return. We anticipate a two month turn-around for each shipment.

The Commodore Card has been redesigned for the first time in 12 years. The new card takes advantage of updated technology and provides greater security.  In the coming academic year, cards belonging to university students, faculty, and staff will be replaced.  Cards will continue to function seamlessly as borrowing cards for library materials and for after-hours access to library buildings.  For  a detailed schedule of when cards will be replaced, visit the Commodore Card Office at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/commodorecard/NewCard.html.

Welcome to the Library! Any time you have a question, just click on the button. We’ll answer your question as fast as we can. For a printable map to all of the campus libraries and answers to question about the library that you might have, check out the 2008/2009 Guide to Libraries

On July 21, Provost Richard McCarty met with the staff of the Jean and Alexander Heard Library to offer his perspective on the future of the library and its importance to the future of the university.

Provost addresses strategic vision for Heard Library

Chancellor Emeritus Alexander Heard, fifth chancellor of Vanderbilt, passed away on Friday, July 24. A memorial service was held on July 29 at Benton Chapel. Although his legacy at Vanderbilt is manifold, in 1983 the University Board of Trust recognized Heard’s work in building the university community by naming the Vanderbilt library system for Heard and his wife, Jean. The library is very proud that the integrity, vitality and vision of the Heards will live on in the library for whom it was named.

• Biography
• Alexander Heard, Vanderbilt’s fifth chancellor, dies
• A chancellor steely in resolve, calm under pressure
• Heard honored in Congress (audio)
• Books written by Heard

Special Collections and University Archives will be closed for renovation from July 3rd to July 31st. We will re-open to the public on Monday, August 3rd. During this time, none of our collections will be available, and we will not be accepting any on-site patrons.

Due to the renovation, all material must be returned to its off-site storage facility by the morning of June 29th.

We will resume full public services on Monday, August 3rd.

Researchers may contact us by phone at (615) 322-2807 or by e-mail at archives@vanderbilt.edu.  Once we open for service on August 3rd, we will respond to messages in the order they were received.