Alumni Career Services is always focused on delivering resources that support alumni career growth. However, we aren’t the only source of career support for Darden alumni. For many, Darden Camp Library is a hidden asset post-graduation, offering access to research, data and expertise that can inform career decisions long after leaving Grounds.
To explore what’s available, we spoke with John Cocklin, Director of the Camp Library. John joined Darden in January 2025 following 29 years at Dartmouth in a range of library leadership roles. We’re grateful to John for sharing how alumni can make the most of Camp Library’s resources for both personal and career growth.
How does the Darden Library serve alumni after graduation?
Alumni can always email us at library@darden.virginia.edu for research assistance. We are probably most helpful to alumni who are interested in exploring new career paths. While most of our online resources are licensed for current Darden Community members, UVA’s Lifetime Learning provides alumni free access to 100+ databases (see information below). We can also suggest resources alumni can seek at their local public university or library as well as point them to openly available resources.
What digital resources, especially career-relevant resources, remain available to alumni within the UVA Library system?
Lifetime Learning provides alumni free access to a robust online research library featuring four databases with over 10,000 journals and articles. The two that are of greatest interest to Darden alumni are:
Business Source Alumni Edition: Full-text sources ranging from general periodicals to trade publications and top management journals. Additional full text sources include country economic reports, industry reports, market research reports, company profiles and more.
Business Book Summaries: Comprehensive summaries are provided for top business books from the last several decades.
More information, including how to create an account, can be found on the Online Research Library page. Note that if you need assistance locating your UVA credentials, the UVA ITS Service Desk can assist.
In addition, UVA and Darden alumni have access to more than 100 databases, on a broad range of topics, through the Library. A highlight here for Darden Alumni includes the Sage databases:
Sage Business: This collection of case studies covers the following subjects: entrepreneurship, human resource management, international business, marketing, operations management and more.
Sage Business Foundations: Covers key and emerging theories and expert viewpoints from a diverse, global authorship to help users gain theoretical knowledge and learn to think critically about and appropriately apply concepts in everyday settings.
Sage Business Skills empowers both students and business professionals to develop and practice real-world skills needed to successfully grow in the modern workplace through interactive self-assessment, virtual scenarios, downloadable data and expert insights.
Sage Data: Sage Data repository contains over 18.9 billion datapoints from over 400 databases sourced from 70 public and private organizations. The datasets contained in Sage Data are structured and homogenized to permit correlation of multiple, diverse indicators.
To access these Library databases, visit the Alumni databases list:
https://guides.lib.virginia.edu/az/alumni
What resources are available to alumni who are local or visiting Grounds?
Camp Library is a beautiful space, and alumni are welcome to visit and read, work or reflect. If they live in the area and would like to check out library books from any UVA library, they can become a community borrower. Registration instructions can be found here:
https://search.lib.virginia.edu/register
Alumni are encouraged to say hello to us while on Grounds, and if they would like to talk about a research question the best way would be for them to request a meeting by emailing library@darden.virginia.edu.
Alumni may access many digital resources, including databases like Factiva for news or IBISWorld for industry reports, through UVA’s web site while on Grounds and connected to the UVA Wi-Fi network or by using public computers available in most UVA library locations. Please note that Darden Camp Library does not provide public computers and that the major business databases to which Darden Library subscribes require accounts and are not available in this way.
Interested in learning more about the services and resources offered by Alumni Career Services? Email us at AlumniCareerServices@darden.virginia.edu.
