The library maintains a wide variety of resources, meeting the research needs of the NCDS community and at the same time providing a quiet and comfortable space for pleasure reading.
Opened in early 2007, the library includes individually-lit carrels, tables, and armchairs. In addition, the library offers study rooms, a media classroom, a technical processing room, a librarian’s office, a school archives area, and display spaces. The temperature-controlled library includes desktop computers and is completely wireless for laptop use.
The librarians collaborate with faculty, planning research assignments and projects and teaching library-related skills for classes, and work with individuals selecting books for personal reading. It is in the library where students are able to locate materials efficiently, use critically, and research effectively. Students and faculty always have the opportunity to offer suggestions for collection development.
Resources in the 10,000 square foot space include a collection of over 17,000 books, DVDs, and audio books, with additional room for future expansion. Newspapers and magazine subscriptions, direct access to databases searching thousands of periodicals, encyclopedias, newspapers and journal articles, and an automated catalog to search the NCDS catalog completes the collection. Students are not only encouraged to access their own public library catalogs to reserve materials but to use the library at Boston College where faculty have borrowing privileges. Both membership in MMRLS (Metrowest Massachusetts Library System) and CLA (Cooperative Library Association) a consortium of independent school libraries in Eastern Massachusetts provide additional support and access to databases statewide.