Vision Statement
The Humanities, Social Science & Education (HSSE) Library is committed to providing optimum access to information that supports teaching and research in the fields reflective of its name. A subject-oriented staff utilizes sophisticated technologies to serve members of the Purdue University community in obtaining, analyzing, and making productive use of information resources in a multiplicity of formats.
As an active participant in the scholarly and pedagogical enterprise of Purdue University, the HSSE Library brings a multitude of resources within easy grasp of humanists and social scientists. It supports intellectual productivity, coordinating access to resources and delivering documents in digitized as well as in traditional printed formats. Information technology allows social scientists to take full advantage of the vastly expanded availability of empirical data generated by public and private agencies. Similarly, the Library supports humanities scholarship by assembling text and image resources, creating the environment for simultaneous analysis of multiple texts and art works, greatly accelerating the processes of information gathering in historical and literary research. The HSSE Library relies on the skills of its staff to assess and satisfy the research and information needs of a diverse constituency. A spirit of collaboration characterizes the relationship between the library and the faculty, guiding students in exploring a wide range of classroom-related interests. By bringing together digitized collections from sites around the globe and by combining them with carefully selected printed resources, the Library's disciplinary specialists are uniquely positioned to develop in students the analytical skills needed to discover multiple resources in multiple formats and use them effectively.