  We introduce and provide the scientific motivation for a wide-field
photometric and spectroscopic chemodynamical survey of nearby early-type
galaxies (ETGs) and their globular cluster (GC) systems. The SLUGGS (SAGES
Legacy Unifying Globulars and GalaxieS) survey is being carried out primarily
with Subaru/Suprime-Cam and Keck/DEIMOS. The former provides deep gri imaging
over a 900 arcmin^2 field-of-view to characterize GC and host galaxy colors and
spatial distributions, and to identify spectroscopic targets. The NIR CaII
triplet provides GC line-of-sight velocities and metallicities out to typically
~8 R_e, and to ~15 R_e in some cases. New techniques to extract integrated
stellar kinematics and metallicities to large radii (~2-3 R_e) are used in
concert with GC data to create two-dimensional velocity and metallicity maps
for comparison with simulations of galaxy formation. The advantages of SLUGGS
compared with other, complementary, 2D-chemodynamical surveys are its superior
velocity resolution, radial extent, and multiple halo tracers. We describe the
sample of 25 nearby ETGs, the selection criteria for galaxies and GCs, the
observing strategies, the data reduction techniques, and modeling methods. The
survey observations are nearly complete and more than 30 papers have so far
been published using SLUGGS data. Here we summarize some initial results,
including signatures of two-phase galaxy assembly, evidence for GC metallicity
bimodality, and a novel framework for the formation of extended star clusters
and ultracompact dwarfs. An integrated overview of current chemodynamical
constraints on GC systems points to separate, in-situ formation modes at high
redshifts for metal-poor and metal-rich GCs.
