The Duke University Libraries are committed to providing top-tiered support for the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. To that end, the Libraries have been supporting research, teaching, and learning by building an exceptional engineering collection for its students and faculty, both for today and the future.
Currently, the engineering collection at Duke University Libraries supports four departments at Pratt: biomedical, civil and environmental, electrical and computing, and mechanical and material science. To meet the needs of engineering faculty and students, the collection includes a variety of resources including essential research literature across formats, especially electronic recources, such as engineering standards and patent information. Clearly, the Libraries’ engineering collection is robust, and is instrumental in supporting the curriculum and research at Pratt.
While current support for the engineering collection sustains the existing programs Pratt, the Libraries could acquire additional top-tier resources to support Duke students and researchers, thereby maintaining a competitive edge in emerging fields. For example, in 2014, research labs and teaching faculty from the departments of Electrical Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, and Computer Science formed the Duke Robotics Group to facilitate world-class, inter – and intra-disciplinary research and teaching in Robotics at Duke. Because of initiatives like this, new research directions are launched at Duke, necessitating the need to add research materials to the collection.
Estabablish an Engineering Collection Endowment (named collection, $300,000)
Additional funding will enable the Libraries to enhance its support for engineering research that faculty and students will benefit from.