Introduction
Most students leaving high school tour college campuses to help them decide which college they want to spend the next 4 years at. These tours almost always make a stop at the campus’ main library.
"The library is the backbone of a college or university's academic environment," says Kelly Alice Robinson, the Career Information Services Manager at Boston College.
Many students will spend the majority of their time studying and doing work here. It offers countless books, a quiet place to study, and valuable databases that most students will have to use at some point in their college careers.
Here at LendEDU, we think it is important for students to consider colleges’ libraries when deciding where to attend. Because so much of their time will be spent there, having a nice library can make a considerable difference in students’ success.
To help students make this decision, we reviewed and analyzed over 200 college libraries across the country. College bound students should review our rankings to help them make their college decisions. Below you will find a list of the 25 most incredible college libraries that provide students with a great place to study, do work, and even hangout.
1) Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library - Yale University
Built in 1963, this recently re-opened iconic building is one of the largest libraries in the world devoted to rare books and manuscripts. On bright days, the Beinecke Library’s six glass-covered stories appear to float above the darkened entryway due to the concealed corner piers that support the structure. The library’s interior has furniture by legendary designer Florence Knoll and sculptures by Isamu Noguchi sit in the sunken courtyard outside. Most notable, though, is the collection itself. The library has one of the 48 existing copies of the Gutenberg Bible as well as the only copy of the strange so-called Voynich Manuscript from the 15th century, among other collections from famous writers and poets.
2) Senator John Pinto Library – Diné College
As the primary learning institution for the vast Navajo nation, Diné College is split between two main campuses and six community centers throughout Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Built in 2010, on the Shiprock campus, the Pinto Library is both traditional, in its reverence for Navajo rites and architecture, and forward-looking, as it melds a very contemporary style with old forms. Light is crucial to the building’s space. Two times a year, the sun casts a beam at a perfect angle to stretch from an exterior glass wall through the whole interior. Light bulbs are meant to resemble constellations in some sections of the library and a calming blue glass storytelling room takes up the traditional Navajo hogan-style building’s center.
3) Cook Legal Research Library – University of Michigan
With its 50-foot vaulted cathedral ceiling, cork floors, moody atmosphere and stained glass windows, the Cook Legal Research Library feels as much like a place of worship as it does a world-class law library. Thought to the one of the largest buildings devoted to legal research in the world, the Cook Library’s original 1931 Gothic structure was expanded in 1981 with a three-story underground addition, making room for a total of 475,00 volumes. The building took more than some inspiration from legal scholar, University of Michigan alum and major benefactor William Cook’s life in New York. The surrounding yew hedges were, according to legend, modeled after Cook’s home in Port Chester and his personal library from his Manhattan home is now shelved in the building.
4) Widener Library – Harvard University
As the centerpiece of a 73-library system – the oldest in the United States and the largest in the entire world – the Widener Library at Harvard is historic for too many reasons to count. Established in its current building in 1915, the library collection can be traced back to 1841, when the school had only 44,000 books to its name. Today, the Widener has titles in over one hundred languages over 57 total miles of shelving. Among the many rare books in the library’s Special Collections are a near-perfect copy of the Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare’s first folios.
5) James B. Hunt Jr. Library – North Carolina State University
The second main library at the North Caroline State University campus, the James B. Hunt Jr. Library’s $115 million structure was opened in 2013. It is best known for its emphasis on technology, including its robotic book storage and retrieval system and its book collections across the sciences. One goal of the library was to provide enough seats for 20% of the student population to do work in the library. To this end, the building takes up 221,000 square feet and its five floors can hold about 1,700 students. An assortment of technological perks, like HDTV video walls, are scattered around this sleekly designed building.
6) Founders Library – Howard University
Recently designated a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Founders Library was named in honor of the 17 men who founded this historically black university. Opened in 1939, the library is the only one in the city of Washington D.C. that is open 24 hours a day. The interior is tasteful and elegant, with its silver oak paneling, and the exterior is done in a clean red brick with limestone trim. With a cost of over $1 million when it was built – with Congress-appropriated funds – it was considered one of the premier academic structures of its day. Much attention was directed towards soundproofing the walls and building floors of cork lined with expensive rugs so that readers could enjoy pure silence.
7) Harold B. Lee Library - Brigham Young University
With an exterior constructed entirely of glass, the Harold B. Lee Library could nearly be mistaken for a greenhouse. Instead, it is the main academic library at the largest religious and private university in the United States at Brigham Young University. Established in 1961, the library holds many important religious texts including a Bible translated by Martin Luther, and a Turkish New Testament, among others. It is said that over 10,000 patrons enter the building each day and the building has over 6 million items in its collection.
8) Klarchek Information Commons – Loyola University
Built in 2005, this cutting-edge library represents the best of what can happen when technology and architecture merge together. As a LEED Silver building, the Klarchek Library has sustainable heating, cooling and, due to its wall of windows overlooking Lake Michigan, plentiful natural light. The space is designed to bring students together through academic collaboration and fosters a community with its open-space planning. It also has high-speed internet connectivity, up-to-date computer labs and specialists for students needing tech help.
9) Firestone Library – Princeton University
When it opened in 1948, the Firestone was the first university library to be constructed after World War II. Today, the building has over 70 miles of bookshelves, which make it one of the largest open-stack libraries in the world. It is also notable for having more books per student than any other university in the United States. The castle-like structure is the primary one of several other libraries on the Princeton campus, a system that holds over 7 million books, 6 million microforms, and 48,000 feet of linear manuscripts in total.
10) Geisel Library – University of California, San Diego
Named after Audrey and Theodore Geisel – the latter is better known by his pen name Dr. Seuss – the Geisel Library is the main branch at the University of California, San Diego. The Brutalist building was opened in 1970 and its flowering cantilevered design makes it one of the most recognizable structures on campus. Along with holding over 7 million total volumes, the library’s collection is especially distinctive as it contains the Mandeville Special Collections and Archives, which hold the 8,500 items that make up the Dr. Seuss Collection. Rising 110 feet in the air, the top floors have study spaces while the collections remain on the lower floors.
11) Uris Library – Cornell University
Built in 1891 with a Romanesque Revival style, the Uris Library is the home to the large humanities and social sciences collections at Cornell. Though the entire library building is impressive, the centerpiece is the Andrew Dickson White Reading Room, a small library within the main library. Named after the school’s first president, and consisting of his own 30,000-book personal collection, the space is notable for its three levels of stacks decorated with ornate wrought iron banisters. The reading room also holds various objects and artifacts from White’s career as a diplomat in Germany and Russia.
12) George Peabody Library – Johns Hopkins University
Finished in 1857 and named after the founding philanthropist, the George Peabody Library is the central research library of Johns Hopkins but is also available to the general public of surrounding Baltimore. (George Peabody’s goal was a library “for the free sue of all persons who desire to consult it.”) Considered one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, this “cathedral of books” was designed with a neo-Greco interior in mind. The building’s atrium has a black and white marble floor and, 61 feet above that, a latticed skylight. Five cast-iron balconies and gold-scalloped columns support the stacks that are tightly packed around the space.
13) Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library – Vassar College
Constructed in a Perpendicular Gothic style, the main library at Vassar has grown exponentially over the years. When the school opened in 1865, the college only had a 3,000-book collection within a single room until Frederick Ferris Thompson helped fund an extension in 1893. His wife Mary Clark expanded it even further until it reached its final structure in 1918. The detailed exterior is built from Germantown stone with Indiana limestone trimming and the interior has one of the most impressive images on campus. The immense Cornaro Window is rightly famous, as the stained glass shows Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman to ever receive a doctoral degree, wearing a robe made from the school’s gray and rose colors.
14) Davis Family Library – Middlebury College
When Middlebury College decided that it needed a new library, it picked a prominent location on the school’s front quad and decided to build it with the best sustainable design practices available. Finished in 2004, the Davis Family Library features some of the most cutting edge and eco-friendly features possible for a contemporary library. The structure is LEED-certified, uses wood harvested from nearby forests, has no plastic surfacing and boasts recycled carpeting. The library’s exterior landscape design emphasizes walkability with numerous paths and clean storm water runoff through its created wetlands and meadows. While many university libraries focus on retaining the past, Middlebury’s library is looking only at the future.
15) Riggs Library – Georgetown University
Designed by the same architect who designed the Library of Congress the Riggs Library at Georgetown is equally stately. The primary library for the school from 1891 until 1970, the Riggs is closed as a circulation library these days and is mostly used for special events. (Even if students can’t check books out directly, it still holds 35,000 volumes on the shelves that can be accessed via special requests.) It is equally important from a historical perspective because it is one of the few remaining cast-iron libraries existing in the country.
16) Fleet Library – Rhode Island School of Design
Originally founded in 1878, the Fleet Library has moved a few times in its long life. (It is considered one of the oldest art school libraries in the country.) It is now at home in an ornate 1917 Italian Renaissance-style banking hall, donated to the school by Fleet Boston. This most recent space boasts a barrel-vaulted ceiling and marble columns, as well as a set of student dorms upstairs. The former-bank-turned-library today houses an unparalleled collection of art, design, photography and architecture books.
17) Bapst Library – Boston College
Named after the college’s first president, the Reverend John Bapst, this was the primary library at Boston College from 1925 until the construction of the much larger Thomas P. O’Neill Library was finished in 1984. Since 1993, the Bapst has been designated as the school’s art library and the building’s design suits that purpose. The second floor reading room shows off colorful stained glass windows dedicated to a number of fields of study and stately stone arches support the ceiling. A sculpture of Mary, Seat of Wisdom, sits above the central doors of the library’s south porch, looking down on busy students.
18) Armstrong Browning Library – Baylor University
Established with the personal cache of one Dr. A. J. Armstrong, the head of Baylor’s English department from 1912 until 1952, the library now holds the largest collection of work by and about the English poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The current building, finished in 1951, has a number of significant architectural features, like bronze doors modeled after St. John’s Baptistry in Florence and a 23-carat gold-leaf dome ceiling. The library’s 62 stained glass windows supposedly make it the largest secular collection of them in the world. The building was expanded and renovated in 1995, then refurbished again in 2012, and today hosts frequent events.
19) William Andrews Clark Memorial Library – University of California, Los Angeles
Another extensive library of rare books and manuscripts, the Clark Library is not far from downtown Los Angeles but the interior feels worlds away. With an architectural style that blends the Italian Renaissance with English baroque, the building features fine brickwork, detailed murals and opulent reading rooms. Completed in 1926, the library houses the world’s largest collections of work from Oscar Wilde and is generally considered to be one of the most important collections of British literature from the 17th and 18th centuries. The institution was founded with the 13,000 titles in the private collection of philanthropist William Andrews Clark, Jr. shortly after the initial construction was finished. In 2009, a nuclear physicist donated his personal library of 72 rare Shakespeare books to the Clark, boosting its holdings even further.
20) Suzzallo Library – University of Washington
As the main library at the University of Washington, the Suzzallo Library sits on the eastern side of the school’s Central Plaza, known as Red Square. With its immense Collegiate Gothic exterior, it is one of the more recognizable structures on campus. Built in 1926 – and named after Henry Suzzallo, the president of the university for many years until he retired that same year – the centerpiece of the library is a 250-foot long and 65-foot tall Graduate Reading Room. This hushed space has a church-like atmosphere with oak bookcases showing hand-carved friezes of the state’s many native plants. On the exterior of the building’s early wings are 18 terra cotta sculptures representing important intellectual figures, from Plato to Beethoven to Darwin, chosen by the faculty when the library was under construction.
21) Joe and Rika Mansueto Library – University of Chicago
Built in 2011, the Mansueto Library is the newest library on the University of Chicago campus. The most notable feature is an elliptical glass dome that tops the library’s five underground stories and lets streams of natural light into a vast reading room. A state-of-the-art automated storage and retrieval system is able to access the 3.5 million volume collection and deliver a book within 5 minutes. This is the largest system of its kind in all of North America and has enough room to acquire more titles for the next 20 years.
22) Linderman Library - Lehigh University
Beginning with its initial construction in 1878, the historic Linderman Library has gone through some major physical changes over the years. After a recent renovation, the tall Victorian rotunda from its early days and the grand reading room from its 1929 addition were given a detailed update. (Supposedly, the school tested 14 shades of gold paint to find one that matched the reading room’s original carved ceiling!) Today, the library holds rare books, like Darwin’s Origin of Species and Audobon’s classic Birds of America, as well as number of digital cataloguing projects and cutting-edge computer labs.
23) W.E.B. Du Bois Library - University of Massachusetts, Amherst
At a towering 28 stories and 308 feet, the Du Bois Library is thought to be both the tallest university library in the world and the second-tallest library of any kind in the world. Built in 1974 and named after the African-American writer and activist W.E.B. Du Bois, the library is part of the area’s Five College Consortium, linking the it with those at nearby Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges. The immense red brick structure can be seen from most viewpoints around the Pioneer Valley and, from the top floor, visitors can get an uninterrupted 360-degree view of the region. The building also has 3D printers for student use and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sculpture to honor the creators who lived in the area.
24) Hale Library – Kansas State University
When it was built in 1927, the school needed to outgrow its then-current library, so the university’s students banded together to get a $5 million referendum passed for this structure to be built. Appropriate to its surroundings, the Hale looks something like a hybrid of a farmhouse, a church and a castle, fitting for one of the best agricultural schools in the country. With giant wood beams and pew-like reading desks, the so-called Great Room has a devout and productive aura to its interior. The library’s five stories make it the largest building on the KSU campus.
25) Fisher Fine Arts Library – University of Pennsylvania
Also known as the Furness Library – the building’s architect was Philadelphia local Frank Furness – the Fisher Fine Arts Library, this red sandstone, brick-and-terra-cotta building is a landmark on campus. Built in 1890 in a Venetian Gothic style, the structure was originally intended to be both the school’s primary library and also house its archeological collection. Considered part fortress and part cathedral due to its bulk, the building was largely rejected by critics and, within several years, many of the collections started to move to other spaces. After the university’s main Van Pelt Library was constructed in 1962, the building was left to house the art and architecture collections. Today, the building has regained some of its former importance and is listed as a National Historic Landmark.
©2016
The post The 25 Most Incredible College Libraries appeared first on Lendedu.