The Campus

The 175-acre campus of the University is located on St. Thomas three miles west of the town of Charlotte Amalie and overlooking Brewer’s Bay.  Currently the buildings include:  The Ralph M. Paiewonsky Library; Residence Halls housing approximately 230 students; Continuing Education, Business Administration, Humanities, Nursing Education, Science and Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Teacher Education Buildings; the Music Center; the William P. MacLean Marine Science Center: and the Leo M. Harvey Student Center with the dining hall and bookstore.  Also, there is the health services center; the Classroom Administration Building, which contains classrooms, a theatre, administration and faculty offices and science laboratories; and The Reichhold Center for the Arts, an open-air amphitheater seating 1196 persons, including 356 covered seats.

The University campus includes the Herman E. Moore Golf Course, Brewer’s Bay beach, tennis courts, and a basketball court for student use as part of the athletic and recreation programs.  Several areas are used as playfields.  The golf course is used as a common area for diverse activities such as golf practice, kite flying, and special events.  The multi-purpose Sports and Fitness Center is under construction and is scheduled for completion in Fall 2000.

The Eastern Caribbean Center, a division of the University, has environmental laboratories and facilities including a Virgin Islands Environmental Resource Station at Lameshur Bay on St. John.

Ralph M. Paiewonsky Library

The Ralph M. Paiewonsky Library, one of the two main libraries of the University, was founded in 1962.  It was moved to its present location on the North Campus in January 1969, and was dedicated and named in honor of former governor, Ralph M. Paiewonsky on March 15, 1969.

The Paiewonsky Library’s main purpose is to support the educational mission of the University.  The collections are oriented toward such programs and are supplemented and updated on a continuous basis.  Its holdings of about 90,000 print volumes, 20,000 other items, including maps, pictures and pamphlets, and over 600,000 pieces of microform are complemented by those of the St. Croix Campus Library (see page 7).  The Paiewonsky Library also has 613 active periodical subscriptions and almost 1,050 periodical titles.  Featured among its resources are several special collections:  The Caribbean Collection of materials pertaining to the culture, history and literature of the Virgin islands and the wider Caribbean area; the Melchior Center for Recent History, a developing collection of recent Virgin Islands material in electronic and print formats; the Casper Holstein Collection on African culture and history; and the circulating William Taussig Memorial Collection, which is focused on African-American and Caribbean culture.   The Library maintains the entire collection of ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) documents on microfilm.  Since 1973, the Library has been a selective depository for U.S. Government materials, a collection that now totals over 15,000 documents in print and electronic formats.  The Library is also a depository for the publications of the Government of the United States Virgin Islands.

Access to the catalogs and to the shared resources of both campus libraries is provided through UVIAL, the University of the Virgin Islands Automated Libraries System.  This shared cataloging module allows students to search and view the library holdings of either campus.  Patrons may use the on-line public access terminals located in both libraries, or may telnet to the system from any computer equipped with a modem or otherwise connected to the campus-wide information network.  Through a well-developed system of inter-campus loans, students, faculty and staff may borrow or otherwise have access to materials from either campus library.  Both libraries offer Internet access from the Libraries’ computer labs.  Links from the Libraries’ Web Page (http://library.uvi.edu/index.htm) provide access to several academic and other databases.  These currently include Searchbank, Medline, ERIC and NewsFile.

The Library maintains membership to OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), through SOLINET (Southeastern Library Network).  Membership in this library network provides opportunities for additional interlibrary laons from and to libraries across the mainland U.S. and around the world, as well as electronic access to cataloging services.