Visual & Performing Arts Library (VPAL)
Hours and Location
2nd Floor, Cravens Library
Phone: (270) 745-2889
The University Libraries' newest division is the Visual and Performing Arts Library (VPAL), which opened in August 2007. Located on the second floor of Cravens Library, the VPAL includes collections on art, dance, fashion, interior design, music, photography, and theatre. The VPAL also includes the Lila Greene Listening & Viewing Library, along with our film and music collections. Materials available in the VPAL include books, DVDs, CDs, and LP records. There is a walk-up scanner available in the VPAL which can scan books and artwork up to 17" x 24" at up to 600 dots/inch. The VPAL also includes a computer classroom for hands-on library instruction and library faculty and staff training.
It houses collections in art, music, theater, dance, historic costumes, fashion, and photography. It also houses our reserve collection, some of which can be accessed remotely.
The VPAL contains circulating and reference books with the Library of Congress call numbers:
| GT 495 - GT 2350 | Fashion & Costume |
| GV 1580 – GV 1799.4 | Dance |
| All books with the call number M | Music |
| All books with the call number N | Art |
| PN 2000 – PN 3307 | Theatre |
| All books with the call number TR | Photography |
| TT 1 – TT 985 | Crafts |
| Books labeled Hum Ref | Musical Scores |
There are over 5,000 music CDs, and they are kept behind the circulation desk in the VPAL. The music CDs that you find in one side of a bin where the DVDs are kept in front of the VPAL circulation desk are a special collection called the "Music Genre" CDs. There are also close to 10,000 titles in our DVD movie collection, of which about a quarter are foreign films. The rest include classic and silent films, musicals, operas and ballets. This DVD collection supports the film-studies program at WKU as well as providing students with movies to watch for fun.
The VPAL provides the state-of-the-art listening and viewing equipment. It also houses
a KIC Bookeye GS400 overhead scanner with an easy-to-use touch screen interface. The
scanner can produce color or black-and-white images of materials up to 17" x 24" and
is ideal for scanning large or fragile items. Features include auto focus and book
mode with auto book fold correction. Images can be saved in a variety of digital formats
including TIFF, JPEG, OCR and multipage PDFs and can convert scanned text images to
audio files. Users are given the option of emailing the scanned images to themselves
or saving them to a USB flash drive. Use of the scanner is free, but printing is not
available at this time.
The VPAL is on the second floor of the Raymond Cravens Library (the taller of the
two library buildings, the other being Helm Library).
- If you come from the Fine Arts Building direction, enter the Raymond Cravens Library building and take the elevator to the second floor.
- If you come from the WKU Commons at Helm direction, come down towards Cravens and you can find the side door with VPAL's signage.
- If you come into Raymond Cravens Library from Normal Street, just go further and turn right to enter the elevator. Then go to the second floor.
Some of the links on this page may require additional software to view.