ACADEMIC RESOURCES

The School of Public Policy and Social Research is located in the Public Policy Building on the UCLA campus, conveniently close to the Charles E. Young Research Library and the food services, coffee house, and bookstore in the James LuValle Commons. The School occupies half of the 80,000 square-foot, six-story building, which faces the Franklin J. Murphy Sculpture Garden, the largest outdoor sculpture garden on the West Coast. The Student Commons on the third floor offers a comfortably furnished lounge, completely equipped kitchen, mailboxes, bulletin boards, and access to the third- floor terrace. Lockers in the building are also available for rental for a small fee.

Computer Facilities

All lab, faculty and staff offices, and classrooms are linked by PUBnet, the School’s state-of-the-art, ATM and fast ethernet computer network. PUBnet provides a wide array of software applications, access to the UCLA library system, the Internet and the Office of Academic Computing’s IBM SP-X supercomputer, which is helpful for research involving large databases or extensive statistical analysis. The network’s fiber-optic cabling and high level of connectivity easily provide the bandwidth necessary for advanced multimedia projects and full-motion video.

The heart of PUBnet is its three computer labs: the first, designed for classroom instruction, is equipped with 30 multimedia-capable Pentium class PCs; the second, with 20 PCs dedicated to walk-in use, plus additional desks for notebook PC users; and the third, with high-end PC workstations for multimedia work, website construction and maintenance, and burning CDs. Use of PUBnet labs is supported by a quarterly fee. Financial aid is available.

All school PCs support Windows NT and are equipped with such standard applications as Word, WordPerfect, Power Point, Access, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat. UCLA provides each student with an account for Bruin Online, UCLA’s free Internet service. For more specialized needs, PUBnet supports statistical analysis software including SPSS, SAS, and STATA; mapping software including ArcInfo and ArcView; and QRS-II and transportation modeling software. A lab assistant and a help-desk telephone are available during regular lab hours. The lab is open to SPPSR students only, and is open every day (except major holidays) during the academic year.

Library and Database Resources

Students in the School of Public Policy and Social Research have access to the holdings of the UCLA Library system (www.library.ucla.edu). With a collection of more than 6.5 million volumes, it is among the top five ranked research libraries in the United States. The libraries hold major collections of archives, technical reports, government publications, microforms, audiovisual materials, corporate reports, and other scholarly resources. More than 94,000 serial titles are received regularly. The bulk of UCLA’s humanities and social science graduate research collection is housed in the Charles E. Young Research Library, just steps from the Public Policy Building. Other specialized collections housed in separate libraries include Management, Law, Maps and Government Information, and Science and Engineering.

The library collections can be searched by using ORION, the Library’s online information system. The University of California’s California Digital Library (www.cdlib.org) provides access to the collections of all nine UC campuses, the California State Library, and other selected libraries within the state. The CDL also hosts the California Periodicals Database, which allows users to search serials owned by more than 550 California libraries and 25 commercially produced journal abstracting and indexing databases.