The Everett Needham Case Library (serving the humanities and social sciences) and the George R. Cooley Science Library (for natural sciences) collectively provide Colgate students with an outstanding array of educational services, resources, and facilities.

In the new Information Age, developing students’ research capabilities has never been more important. The Libraries offer
on-demand consultation services, workshops, course-integrated instruction, and web-based tutorials designed to promote information literacy across the curriculum. Helping students learn to build personal knowledge bases in new areas of interest using locally owned materials or those borrowed from around the world is at the heart of the Library’s educational mission.

Students have complete access to a carefully developed collection designed to meet their curricular and research needs. The print collections include more than 630,000 volumes and 2,250 periodical subscriptions. The Libraries also provide extensive archival resources, state and government documents, and an expansive music, multimedia, and video collection.

Additionally, there is a 24/7 networked Internet access to more than 140 proprietary scholarly indexes and abstracts, including full-text databases containing thousands of newspaper, magazine, and journal articles. The web-based library catalog offers unique functionality including records for (and access to) web sites of curricular value, online self-renewal and a special reserves database.

To accommodate diverse learning styles, preferences, and
research needs, the Libraries provide individual study carrels, cloistered seating, collaborative group study, three computer labs,
an all-night study lounge, a music room, and a Special Collections Department where students frequently do original research using primary, rare, or unusual materials in the archival collections.

Information Technology Services (ITS) provides a variety of computer services to the Colgate community.

The computer lab in the O’Connor Campus Center is open for student use seven days a week during the academic year. It is equipped with both Windows and Apple Macintosh computers, laser printers, digital scanners and other multi-media equipment. Many individual departments have small banks of computers for students doing specialized work in that discipline. Although students are not required to own a computer, most students buy a Windows computer. A laptop should be a serious consideration for the portability it provides. While ample public machines exist, it may be difficult to get access to one during peak times. A laptop can be very useful, especially when students need to work with information resources in the library. Colgate offers discounts on Windows and Macintosh systems through the University Bookstore.

Each student is provided with an e-mail account on arrival at the college. E-mail service is free and available from all public stations
and plug-in network ports throughout the campus. Each room in residence halls owned by the college is equipped with network jacks. Students must purchase an approved ethernet board for their computers to connect to the network. Once the connection is set up, students can plug in anywhere on the network during their four years at Colgate.

All computers in public labs and department locations, as well
as personal computers attached to subscribed network jacks, are connected to a pervasive, high-speed campus network, powered
by fiber-optics and a bank of Windows NT and UNIX servers. The network allows communication throughout the campus and connects every student to the Internet for communication and research.

Support for student computing is provided by professional staff and trained peer consultants through the Student Computing and Networking (SCAN) group and SOURCe (Student Operated User Resource Center), a student-run helpline system.

Lynn Waldman, Director of Academic Program Support and Disability Services, provides individualized assistance for students who want to develop strategies that foster better understanding
and control of the learning process. Her office is a clearinghouse
for information and guidance about academic advising, tutoring, assessments of learning needs and disability resources. Students can explore new approaches to studying, notetaking, time management, organization, and test-taking.

Each student has a faculty adviser who helps with academic planning, course selection, and academic problem-solving. The academic advising system is flexible and allows students to change advisers as they become better acquainted with faculty and more certain about areas of academic interest.

The faculty member who teaches a student’s first-year seminar serves as the academic adviser for the first two years, although, after the first semester, a student may change advisers.

In the spring term of the second year, students choose an academic adviser in the academic department which they have chosen for their concentration.

"Links" are upperclass students trained as peer advisers for first-year students. Links are assigned to first-year seminars and help all the students in that class with the transition from high school to college. They provide information and guidance about life outside the classroom and help new students make connections with faculty members for academic advising. The Link is often the first familiar face for new students at Colgate, and a peer whom they can trust
with questions or concerns.

The Writing Center is an important academic support service at Colgate. Staffed by 20 peer tutors and open for more than 40 hours per week, it provides a place for students to work on their papers in any course and at any stage of development. In addition to drop-in peer tutoring, the Writing Center offers professional tutoring to meet students’ individual learning needs. Open to all, the Writing Center can be especially helpful to those for whom English is a second language and those with learning disabilities.

The Office of Undergraduate Studies (OUS) provides academic support and an opportunity to excel at Colgate for students who
show excellent academic potential but who may have been denied the opportunity to achieve at their full capacity. Students participating
in OUS come from a variety of ethnic, socio-economic and academic backgrounds. Students designated for the OUS program are selected at the time of admission and retain that designation until graduation.

The underlying principle of OUS is that all of its students can
and should succeed. OUS is committed to facilitate that success by offering a variety of services throughout the student’s time at Colgate. Among the services are: free professional and peer tutoring in all academic areas; personal, academic, financial, and career counseling; lectures, film series, and workshops; a newsletter; academic assessment, mentoring program, and community service projects.

The Center for Women’s Studies, located on the lower level of East Hall, was founded in 1991 to extend education on issues of gender and women’s studies to the entire Colgate community. The center houses an extensive library of books, journals, magazines, pamphlets, and other resources concerning gender in the United States and across cultures. It provides a meeting space, coordinates programming on women’s issues, and initiates activities and workshops on a wide variety of subjects.

With its classroom, seminar room, and comfortable lounge, the Center for Women’s Studies serves as an environment supportive of free and open dialogue among students, faculty, and staff both inside and outside the classroom. All members of the Colgate community are invited to study at the center, use its resources, and become involved in its activities. In this way, the center enhances the understanding of the crucial nature of gender and sexuality in all of our lives.

Colgate’s ALANA (African/African American, Asian/Asian American, Latin American, Native American) Cultural Center plays a significant role in bringing together the ALANA community as well as all Colgate students. It serves as a learning center and home where students may come to understand the cultures, achievements and contributions of ALANA peoples.

First established through the efforts of the Association of Black Collegians in 1969, the center was rededicated in a new building in the spring of 1989. It offers a variety of resources, including a multipurpose room where lectures, meetings, discussions, and open houses take place. There is an office shared by several student organizations, a kitchen, a seminar room where various classes, committees and other groups meet, a study room and a library with a non-circulating collection of approximately 3,000 volumes. The addition of new computers has transformed the study room and the library into spaces that are especially conducive to individual and group study.

The Cultural Center plays an advising and facilitating role for ALANA student organizations and collaborates with faculty and administrators on promoting multicultural education outside the classroom. In preparing students for a diverse workplace, such collaboration includes learning the value of community service. Working with student monitors, "ambassadors," and student outreach workers called the Coalition for a Better World, the
center develops and coordinates intellectual, educational and social programs. The center sponsors and co-sponsors speakers, performances, exhibitions, cultural dinners, field trips, debates, forums and "just plain fun" events. The center is used by diverse groups throughout the campus, including the Interfraternity-Sorority Council, Volunteer Colgate, yoga classes and the Office of Residential Life. As one alumnus said, "It is a community that is open to everyone."