Wikipedia

Draft:Syracuse University Libraries


Syracuse University Libraries is an academic library and the library system of Syracuse University, an R-1 research institution. In 2024, Syracuse University Libraries ranked 53 out of 118 academic research library members in the Association of Research Libraries Investment Ranking. As of June 2025, the Libraries holds more than 4.8 million titles in its general collections and over 210,000 titles in its law collection. More than half of its general collections are electronic resources. Its Special Collections Research Center holds nearly 88,000 total linear feet of rare books, printed materials, original manuscripts, photographs, artworks, audio and moving image recordings and University Records.

Structure

The library is administered as an academic division; the Dean of the Libraries and University Librarian reports to the University provost. The Libraries’ portfolio includes Bird Library, Carnegie Library, King+King Architecture Library, the College of Law Library, the Special Collections Research Center, the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive, and the LaunchPad on the University’s main campus. The University’s south campus is home to the remote storage Facility, University Records Management, and the Syracuse University Press.

Bird Library is Syracuse University’s main library. Those with an ID can enter the building 24 hours Monday through Thursday, and Friday and Saturday until 10 pm during the academic year.

Bird Library provides various types of spaces for its users, from open collaborative work areas to reservable individual study rooms and team rooms. There are designated quiet spaces throughout the building. On the first floor of Bird Library there is a service desk for library users to borrow books, technology, wellness materials and other resources from the Libraries’ collections. There is also a staffed Research and Printing service desk where users can ask questions. Pages Café, located on the first floor, is the University’s busiest café on campus. The LaunchPad, the University’s entrepreneurial and innovation resource for the entire campus community, is located on the first floor.

The second floor of Bird Library houses the reference collection, periodicals and newspapers, and the Dean’s office. The third floor offers a map room with the Libraries’ print map collection of over 200,000 sheet maps, 10,000 atlases and 80,000 aerial collections. The third floor also houses public access to the government documents collection, which includes publications from the State of New York, City of Syracuse and Onondaga County. Bird Library is also home to the largest collection of national archives of Kenya and Tanzania.

The fourth floor is home to the Digital Scholarship Space, a workshop, laboratory and classroom designed for the study and creation of digital artifacts and experiences and run by the University’s Information Technology Services unit. The fifth floor includes the Mower Faculty Commons, a dedicated space for faculty to gather, meet and work independently or with colleagues, and the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, a unit that facilitates pedagogical learning and reflection for all educators.

The SCRC collection areas include: Activism and Social Reform, Antiquarian Books, Architecture and Industrial Design, Artists Painters and Sculptors, Broadcasting History, Cartoons and Cartoonists, Charters Library of Resources for Educators and Adults, Illustration Printing and Publishing, New York State History and Ephemera, Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster, Photography and Photojournalism, Plastics, Pulp Literature and Science Fiction, Radicalism in the Arts, Recorded Sound and Music, Religious and Utopian Communities, Science and Medicine, and Syracuse University History.

It is located next door to Bird Library but is not open to the public. Holdings total more than 500,000 items in all formats, primarily cylinders, discs, and magnetic tapes.Since 2011, the Libraries has produced Sound Beat, a 90-second audio interstitial program that airs on nearly 375 stations across the world.

Syracuse University Libraries’ provides access to its unique digital collections, both special and general collections, through its open access digital library.

The historic Carnegie Library serves as a quiet reading room. It includes team rooms and a computer workstation and printing room. King + King Architecture Library, located in Slocum Hall, houses the Libraries’ architectural reference collection and current periodicals, as well as some of the Libraries’ Architectural Working Drawings Collection. The College of Law Library in Dineen Hall houses the entire collection of law resources.

Syracuse University Libraries’ portfolio includes a high-density, climate-controlled offsite storage and service complex known as the Facility that houses many of its collection materials.

SU Press, established in 1943, publishes scholarly books in several academic fields, as well as book on the history and environment of New York State. The Press’ active series include Contemporary Issues in the Middle East, Critical Arab American Studies, Falk College Series on Sport and Society, Gender Culture and Politics in the Middle East, Haudenosaunee and Indigenous Worlds, Irish Studies, Judaic Traditions in Literature Music and Art, Middle East Literature in Translation, Middle East Studies Beyond Dominant Paradigms, Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East, New York State and Regional studies, Perspectives on Assyrian Studies, Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution, Syracuse University, Television and Popular Culture, Veterans Writing Award, and Writing Culture and Community Practices.

Initiatives

Syracuse University Libraries consists of staff and student employees who maintain the library systems, processes, and infrastructure that serve the University’s faculty, students, staff, alumni, and the public. The Libraries provide resources for both physical and virtual visitors. It supports teaching, research, and information literacy skills. Libraries professional staff contribute to academic scholarship in their respective fields.

The Libraries is committed to the University’s goal of providing experiential inquiry for students. A few examples include through student work with archival materials in the Special Collections Research Center, development of entrepreneurial and workplace skills through engagement with the LaunchPad, and teaching opportunities for student employees studying library sciences and information literacy.

The Libraries collaborate with campus partners to drive the open distribution of research, data, and scholarship through open access research initiatives. The Libraries manages the University’s open access institutional repository, SURFACE, has contracted with several publishers to provide Open Access Read and Publish Agreements, and has participated in open access book publishing through Syracuse University Press.

History and Buildings of Syracuse University Libraries[1][2]1

For the first two years of its existence, Syracuse University and its first library were housed in downtown Syracuse on the Myers Block at the corner of East Genesee and Montgomery Streets. The library, together with reading rooms, classrooms and faculty offices, were housed on the second floor. The library’s first book was Benjamin Tucker’s Epitome of Ancient & Modern History (Philadelphia, 1822), which is now part of the Special Collections Research Center’s rare book collection.

Syracuse University’s first librarian was John P. Griffin, who served in this role from 1871 to 1875 and oversaw the move of the library from downtown to the Hall of Languages in 1873. When the University moved to its new location in 1873, the library was placed in a back room (Room 207) on the third floor of the first campus building. At this location, the library’s hours were 9 AM to 1 PM, and books were non-circulating and locked in wire cages.

The Von Ranke Library, 1889 - 1907


In 1878, the University became a regional depository library in the Federal Depository Library Program of the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO).


Trustee Reid and University Librarian Sibley soon realized that The von Ranke Library provided ample storage but inadequate reading and office space, due to the growing number of periodicals and Library Economics classes held in the building. A west wing addition completed in 1903 did not bring significant relief. It became clear the University needed another, larger library building.

Carnegie Library, 1907 - 1972

Since 1883, steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie had been funding construction of primarily public libraries all over the country and abroad. Syracuse University approached Carnegie with a proposal to fund a new campus library shortly after the completion of construction of The von Ranke Library addition. Carnegie agreed to provide the $150,000 of building costs if the University would match his gift to establish a library endowment. In Spring 1905, Syracuse University met this condition. Syracuse University’s Carnegie Library officially opened on September 11, 1907, after books and pamphlets had been transferred from The von Ranke Library. The architects were Professors Frederick W. Revels and Earl Hallenbeck. The librarian of the University of Pennsylvania hailed Carnegie as the best designed academic library building in the country. The Syracuse University’s library system now held 71,422 volumes, almost 20,000 of which were housed across campus in the various schools and colleges’ ten department libraries. The new Carnegie Library building housed a main reading room and bookshelves or stacks, along with the University’s new Library School.

As with The von Ranke Library, shortly after opening it became clear that Carnegie Library would not be able to accommodate the ever-expanding demands of the growing University. The rapid growth of the collections and the student body revealed the long-term inadequacy of the Carnegie Library. Students sat on radiators or stairs due to lack of reading room space. By the 1940s, University Librarian Wharton Miller complained that Carnegie Library was “an ill-suited, over-crowded, poorly equipped, wretchedly lighted, noisy, inefficient building [… which …] can only be more forcefully related as the number of students increases and as new demands are made on it by recently appointed faculty members who are accustomed to better conditions, better treatment.” Between 1927 and 1954, the library’s collection would grow from 136,000 to 487,000 volumes. To save valuable space, the Syracuse University Library became a leader in microfilm reproduction.

By the 1930s the von Ranke Collection was considered out-of-date, so it was separated from the principal collection. Turning the von Ranke Library into a ‘special collection’ was the beginning of a development which, in 1956, led to the creation of the library’s rare book department on Carnegie’s third floor thanks to the generous support of George Arents, heir of the American Tobacco Company. Chancellor William P. Tolley approached Arents with the idea of a rare books room for the Syracuse University Library in 1955. It took only a year until the oak-paneled and air-conditioned Arents Rare Book Room was completed, and it formally opened the following spring on April 30, 1957.

By 1959, the demand for storage space led to the University’s purchase of the former Continental Can Company building on Erie Boulevard in Syracuse for the storage of overflow books and a large part of the Library’s manuscript collections. It also came to house the Syracuse University Press, the Library’s Order Department, the Gift and Exchange Department, and the Music Library.

The Diane and Arthur Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive began as an audio archive in 1963 and was also located in the basement of the Continental Can Company building. Belfer’s early success and steady growth were owed to the passion and commitment of its first curator, Walter Welch. A pioneer of sound re-recordings and preservation technology, Belfer has grown into one of the nation’s top five repositories of audio recordings. In July 2008, Syracuse University became the owner of the second largest collection of 78 rpm records in the United States, after the Library of Congress, after a donation of more than 200,000 records.

Bird Library, 1972 -

After having considered a system of smaller libraries (a central library, an undergraduate library, and a separate building for rare books and manuscripts), Chancellor Tolley announced in February 1967 the block of Walnut Park as the choice for a new library building. Instead of three separate branches, the envisioned new library was to house all collections on seven floors totaling 212,000 square feet. A significant donor to the project was alumnus Ernest Stevenson Bird ’16, whose total contribution would ultimately amount to $3 million, along with George Arents H’33 who gifted the University $2 million, the federal government who contributed $3 million under Titles I and II, and numerous other Syracuse University students, trustees, and private donors.

Construction on Bird Library, located at 222 Waverly Avenue, began in the summer of 1969, shortly before Tolley’s retirement that September. The building architects were King and King Associates. The building was completed in 1972 at a cost of $13.8 million. The move of the nearly 3 million books, periodicals, manuscripts, and microforms from Carnegie Library, the various branches, and the Continental Can building began on July 31, 1972, and took over a month and involved 48 library employees and students working in twelve-hour shifts. The George Arents Research Library, later the Special Collections Research Center, moved from the Lena R. Arents Rare Book Room at Carnegie into its new home on the sixth floor of Bird Library. On August 17, 1973, the library was closed to the public while tests were conducted to determine the stress capacity of the structure. Testing was completed at the request of the State Dormitory Authority. Concrete blocks were layered on the 5th floor equal to 150 lbs. per square foot while readings were made every three hours. The building’s dedication took place on April 6, 1973, with retired Syracuse University Chancellor Dr. William Tolley as the speaker.

Until Syracuse University Libraries’ transition to automated information retrieval systems in the 1970s, the card catalog was the central tool to browse the ever-growing collections. In 1981, Syracuse University Libraries was one of the first major libraries to retire its card catalog.

Libraries, 2000 -

At Carnegie Library’s centennial celebration in 2007, it was noted that the building was one of only two original Carnegie libraries on a college campus still being used as a library. In summer 2011, renovations began on Carnegie Library to upgrade it for contemporary use . The main reading room was renovated to allow for silent study space, library office space was relocated to the 2nd floor, and a computer room and new security system were added. For the first time since the mid-1970s, the main entrance to the library was reinstated through the front stairs and doors.

In 2012, the Libraries opened its offsite storage Facility at 1556 Jamesville Avenue at a cost of $5 million. The architects were VIP Structures. The 20,000 square foot facility was designed to house 1.2 million volumes in a consistently maintained ideal environment of controlled heat and humidity. It also included a processing area, office space, and conference room. In 2022, a 14,000 square-foot addition was added to the Library Storage Facility that includes cool and cold storage vaults with specialized heating ventilation and air conditioning control systems.

In 2016, the Blackstone Launchpad opened on the first floor of Bird Library as a cross-disciplinary entrepreneurship and innovation hub serving students, faculty, staff and alumni. The LaunchPad received initial funding from the Blackstone Charitable Foundation as part of a global network of more than 70 universities around the world.

King + King Architecture Library, located on the third floor of Slocum Hall, was dedicated in early 2018 with a gift from alumni Russell ’52 and Joan ’50 King, whose architectural firm, King + King Associates, designed several buildings on the Syracuse University campus, including Bird Library. It supports the School of Architecture with a curated collection of over 3,500 volumes, including current periodicals, building codes, technical resources, key architectural titles and a portion of the Libraries’ Working Drawings Collection.

References

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  1. ^ “Let the reader emerge!’ Milestones of the Syracuse University Libraries” exhibition, Special Collections Research Center. Syracuse University Libraries. Retrieved January 29, 2026.
  2. ^ Dames, K. Matthew; Gwilt, Roberta B.; Warren, Scott A.; Carrier, T.C. (2015-04). Collections and Space: an update on Syracuse University Libraries' Journals Migration Project (Report). Syracuse University Libraries. {{cite report}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)