Brooklyn College's original Library, La Guardia Hall, anchors the east end of the college campus, one of several lovely and harmonious Georgian buildings surrounding a large, tree-shaded green. The Library occupies not only this recently restored 1937 building, whose commanding clocktower serves as the College's emblem and an important traditional symbol, but also a 1959 addition increased the Library's space for services and collections to some 153,000 square feet.

In fall 1998 construction began on a major capital improvement project for renovation of the existing library. The new library, reopened in the fall of 2002, now encompasses nearly 280,000 square feet of space. Expanded seating (up from 600 seats to 2317 seats) and stack areas (up from Before 5,248 shelf units to 6,700 shelf units), with an emphasis on advanced technology in library services, enhances the library's role as the central information resource of the college.

The Library's mission, the provision of integrated information support forthe College's instructional and research activities, is supported by collections totaling 1.2 million volumes, 5,000 periodical subscriptions, and significant electronic, audiovisual, and microform holdings. The Library adds approximately 15,000 new titles each year to its comprehensive humanities, social sciences, and sciences collections. The Library serves 16,000 students and a full-time faculty of 600.

The Brooklyn College Library is fully automated. Facilities include an integrated library system (using NOTIS software), a local area network with a direct connection to the Internet, extensive bibliographic and full-text holdings on CD-ROM, World Wide Web access, and multimedia collections. Some 95 percent of the library’s collection is represented in CUNY+, the online catalog. This catalog also shows the library’s journal holdings and provides acces to periodical indexes.

The College's academic computing program is also part of the Library. A state- of-the-art Faculty Training and Development Laboratory and three multimedia classrooms support this initiative.

The library houses Circulation, Information Services (including reference), Research and Access Services (including interlibrary loan and document delivery), Special Collections and Archives, the Office of the Chief Librarian, the LAN nodes, and Internet terminals. Circulating books are housed on the second floor and third floors. The lower level houses periodicals (print and microforms), government documents, and Internet terminals. The Music Library and Media Center are located on the second floor and include the music reference collection, music circulation services and the audio visual collection.

Brooklyn College librarians provide extensive reference service to faculty and students over the course of a seventy-two hour service week. The Library also has an active instruction program, providing training in the use of information resources in all formats for freshman English classes and advanced subject lectures for upper-division courses. The collaborative building and shaping of resources by librarians and faculty is a tradition at the College... one that has contributed to the significance of the collections, which are widely acknowledged to be among the best in the City University system. The library collection supports undergraduate and master’s-level study in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Collecting Strengths

• English and American literature
• French literature
• U.S. politics and government
• American and European history
• Special education
• American music
• Art (painting)
• Women's studies
• African-American studies
• Ethiopian
• Somalian
• and African history
• Judaic studies
• Chemistry (inorganic)
• Biology (microbiology; cytology)
• Physics (nuclear)
• and Archival holdings in Brooklyn studies
• urban studies
• and politics

Not only do print and electronic formats support the College's celebrated core curriculum and other undergraduate and graduate programs, but the Library also holds important special collections, among these the Brooklyniana Collection, the Manuscripts Collection (including materials of Oscar Handlin and Sam Levenson), the Robert L. Hess Collection on Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, the College Archives and the College Oral History Archives.

The Library acknowledges its responsibility to meet faculty and student information needs, wherever the materials they want actually reside; using traditional interlending and commercial document suppliers, the Research Services unit provides rapid, efficient access to remotely held materials.

The Library participates in cooperative activities and arrangements with other libraries in the Borough of Brooklyn (Academic Libraries of Brooklyn), in the metropolitan area (Metropolitan Reference and Research Agency-METRO), within the State of New York, and nationally (Online Computer Library Center-OCLC). The Brooklyn College Library is represented on the Council of Chief Librarians of the City University of New York. This body works closely to promote the development of system-wide library projects benefiting all CUNY libraries.