Liaison: Teresa Bowden (teresa.bowden@louisville.edu), Ekstrom Reference

Date:     9 April 1999

I. Program Description and Purpose of Collection:

The Department of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Louisville offers degree programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The Bachelor of Arts in biology provides a broad background in the biological and natural sciences, and requires 33 credit hours of biology. The Bachelor of Science requires 45 credit hours of biology and allows for a student to concentrate their studies in Genetic/Sub-cellular Biology, Cellular/Physiology, Ecology or Organism Biology. At the graduate level, students can obtain a Master of Science in Biology or a Ph.D. in Environmental Biology. There are approximately 20 faculty positions in this department, and as of 1996 there were 685 undergraduate, 40 master’s and 36 Ph.D. students in the Department of Biology.

The biology materials are primarily housed at Ekstrom Library. Additional materials can be found at the Kornhauser Health Sciences Library. The materials include books, journals, magazines, newspapers, videos, indexes, databases, and numerous print reference sources. We have several electronic databases that specifically support the biological sciences including Biological Abstracts, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts and Science Citation Index. To see these and more, go to http://www.louisville.edu/library/research.

The majority of the collection focuses on the late Twentieth Century. However, our book collection dates back to rare sources from 1658. While most of the works are in English, there are also sources in French, German and other languages.

Materials for Ekstrom Library are chosen through recommendations made by librarians and Biology Faculty and also through an approval plan. The approval plan includes books from all major U.S. university and university-affiliated presses, plus selected Canadian university presses. The approval plan also includes books in the life sciences from selected commercial presses, including Academic Press, Blackwell, Elsevier Science, Greenwood, Jossey-Bass, Praeger, Routledge, Sage and Springer Verlag.

Current Subscriptions/Standing Orders: (link to http://www.louisville.edu/library/research/biology/per.html)

The libraries have a large collection of electronic resources. For more information about resources supporting this field of study and research, please visit the Libraries’ Research Center web site:

http://www.louisville.edu/library/research/ or http://www.louisville.edu/library/research/biology/path.html

V. Resource Sharing:

The libraries have resource sharing agreements with several regional and national consortia: Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET); Metroversity (Louisville area libraries); the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL); and the State Assisted Library Consortium of Kentucky (SAALCK). The primary resource sharing service is Interlibrary Loan, available at the Ekstrom and Kornhauser Libraries. The Libraries also can take advantage of discounted pricing for many electronic databases, through membership in consortia. In 1999, the Kentucky Commonwealth Virtual Library is going to become available, providing statewide access to a core set of electronic databases.

VI. Related areas: Chemistry, Geosciences, Health & Physical Education, and Psychology.