Washington University Libraries

Washington University Libraries is the library system of Washington University in St. Louis. With 14 libraries and over 4.2 million volumes, it is the largest library system in the state of Missouri. The John M. Olin Library is the central library.

Olin Library

Centrally located on the Danforth Campus, just west of the Brookings Quadrangle, Olin Library houses general-interest materials and collections in the humanities, social sciences, and engineering. It is also a designated federal depository library and houses over 70,000 microfilms. Special collections include the literary papers of James Merrill, Samuel Beckett, Howard Nemerov, Stanley Elkin, William Gass, and Mona Van Duyn; the Film and Media Archive includes material created by alumnus Henry Hampton documenting the Civil Rights Movement.

Built in 1963 after a gift from John M. Olin, the John M. Olin Library replaced the University's former main library at Ridgley Hall. In 2004, the Olin Library underwent an extensive renovation. The library contains a cafe and coffee shop, study spaces for graduate and undergraduate students, and many general services and administrative support for the Washington University Library System.

Specialty libraries

• Kranzberg Art & Architecture Library - serves the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the Department of Art History & Archaeology.
• Kopolow Business Library - serves the Olin Business School. Databases provided by Moody's, Standard & Poor's, Hoover's, and Disclosure; receives comprehensive real-time stock and other market information through the Bloomberg and Bridge Information Systems; maintains a book collection of around 30,000 volumes and subscriptions to more than 400 major business journals, magazines, and newspapers.
• Chemistry Library - serves mainly the Chemistry Department and other science departments
• Digital Gateway - serves as a single point of entry for discovery of all digital collections available at WUSTL, provides a similar single point of entry for anyone in the WUSTL community interested in developing digital projects.
• Ronald Rettner Earth and Planetary Sciences Library
• East Asian Library - serves the information and research needs of the WUSTL East Asian Studies Program. The East Asian Library consists almost entirely of materials in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages, with over 140,000 volumes. Special holdings include the Robert S. Elegant Collection; primarily the assorted files of clippings of newspapers, magazines, and news releases covering the period of the Chinese Cultural Revolution; Nelson Wu's collection on East Asian art, architecture, and Chinese culture; and the Thomas Temple Hoopes' collection on Japanese sword and Japanese art history.
  

  

  East Asian Library reading room on the Danforth Campus
• Law Library - the law library of Washington University School of Law. Houses strong collections in the areas of tax law, urban law, environmental law, land use planning, Chinese law, Japanese law, and international law; an official depository for federal documents published by the Government Printing Office and a depository for government publications of the state of Missouri. Contains over 650,000 volumes and volume equivalents.
• Bernard Becker Medical Library - serves the Washington University School of Medicine, the Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and the St. Louis Children's Hospital; contains over 110,000 volumes, along with over 9,100 print and electronic journal titles.
• Gaylord Music Library - a music library holds over 100,500 books and scores, 40,500 recordings and tapes, 5,200 microform items and more than 24,000 pieces of sheet music, with strong holdings in Americana, Festschriften, early music, opera, and music literature. Special collections include the Tyson Collection of 168 Mozart and 100 Beethoven first and early editions.
• Gustavus A. Pfeiffer Physics Library - contains book and serial publications supporting the Physics Department. Actively collected materials include the areas of astrophysics, mathematical physics, condensed matter, elementary particles, probability theory, statistical mechanics, many-body systems, low temperature, high pressure, material physics, and ultrasonic physics.
• Social Work Library - houses social work materials, including 50,000 books, journals, publications and videos; periodical holdings consist of more than 450 current subscriptions; adds more than 1,000 bound volumes to the collection each year; strong collections in the fields of child welfare, community development, family therapy, mental health, children and youth, gerontology, public welfare, management of human services, and social policy.
• Special Collections consists of five units including Washington University Film & Media Archive, WU Manuscripts, Modern Graphic History Library, Rare Books, and University Archives.
• West Campus Library - contains monographs, journals, folio books, government documents, maps, recordings, and microforms. Notable collections include all titles published prior to 1801 that are not part of WUSTL Special Collections and a significant portion of the University's Government Document holdings.