The mission of the Mathewson Library is to provide an encouraging and inclusive environment for all students. We provide a variety of resources through which students are guided to become critical thinkers and independent learners, able to collaborate with others to seek, retrieve, evaluate, and communicate information in an ever-changing technical landscape.
The Mathewson Library is a major center of student activity on campus. Students gather here before and after school, during break, lunch, and free periods. The library is a place to read in the soft-seating areas, study in the individual study carrels, work together at the large tables, or write, design, or research using student's tablets or laptops. Wireless network access is available throughout the Library.
Andrade Theater, the Library Classroom, and the Library Conference Room allow for a versatile learning experience. Andrade Theater has 82 permanent seats and is often used for guest speakers, group and individual student presentations, and other activities. The Library Classroom is used to introduce students to research assignments before they begin exploring library print and electronic resources, and the Conference Room is available for students to collaborate on group projects, prepare presentations, or study together.
Resources
The Mathewson Library's collection includes both print and e-books (over 33,000 in total), print editions of 5 periodicals, and over 400 videos (available for faculty check-out). With digital resources increasingly important for secondary and post-secondary school students, Bellarmine is proud to provide more than 25 subscription databases including those from Gale, Infobase, JSTOR, Oxford University Press and ProQuest. Many of these are the same databases that students will use at the collegiate level.
The aforementioned resources are included in our online catalog which students can access at school as well as off campus.
Curriculum
Information literacy is taught in collaboration with our faculty throughout the four years of high school. Students learn to distinguish reliable sources from those that are biased, inaccurate, or out-of-date. By using Bellarmine's print library and growing electronic resources, students are able to access top-notch materials for all studied disciplines and have the research skills necessary for college.