The Cornell University Library is the

library A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

system of

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

. As of 2014, it holds over eight million printed volumes and over a million

ebook An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. A ...

s. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 periodical titles are available online. It has 8.5 million

microfilm A microform is a scaled-down reproduction of a document, typically either photographic film or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original d ...

s and

microfiche A microform is a scaled-down reproduction of a document, typically either photographic film or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original d ...

s, more than of manuscripts, and close to 500,000 other materials, including motion pictures, DVDs,

sound recordings Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, Mechanical system, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of ...

, and

computer file A computer file is a System resource, resource for recording Data (computing), data on a Computer data storage, computer storage device, primarily identified by its filename. Just as words can be written on paper, so too can data be written to a ...

s, extensive

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

resources, and the University Archives. It is the 16th-largest library in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

, ranked by number of volumes held, and the 13th-largest research library in the U.S. by both titles and volumes held.

Structure

The library is administered as an academic division; the University Librarian reports to the university provost. The holdings are managed by the Library's subdivisions, which include 16 physical and virtual libraries on the main campus in

Ithaca, New York Ithaca () is a city in and the county seat of Tompkins County, New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York (state), New York, Ithaca is the largest community in the Ithaca metrop ...

, a storage annex in Ithaca for overflow items, the library of

Weill Cornell Medical College Weill Cornell Medicine (; officially Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University), originally Cornell University Medical College, is the medical school of Cornell University, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in Ne ...

, and the archives of the medical college and of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, a branch of the medical library serving Weill Cornell in Qatar campus in

Doha Doha ( ) is the capital city and main financial hub of Qatar. Located on the Persian Gulf coast in the east of the country, north of Al Wakrah and south of Al Khor (city), Al Khor and Lusail, it is home to most of the country's population. It ...

, and the library of the

New York State Agricultural Experiment Station The New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (NYSAES) at Geneva, Ontario County, New York State, is an agricultural experiment station operated by the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. In August 2 ...

Geneva, New York Geneva is a City (New York), city in Ontario County, New York, Ontario and Seneca County, New York, Seneca counties in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is at the northern end of Seneca Lake (New York), Seneca Lake; all land port ...

. The John M. Olin Library is the primary research library for the social sciences and humanities, and the Harold D. Uris

Library A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

has extensive holdings in the humanities and social sciences. The Albert R. Mann Library specializes in agriculture, the life sciences, and human ecology. The Carl M. Kroch Library includes the university's Rare & Manuscript Collections and extensive Asia collections.

History

The Cornell University Library system initially was a collection of 18,000 volumes stored in Morrill Hall.

Daniel Willard Fiske Daniel Willard Fiske (November 11, 1831 – September 17, 1904) was an American librarian and scholar, born on November 11, 1831, at Ellisburg, New York. He was awarded American Library Association Honorary Membership in 1895. Biography Fiske ...

, Cornell's first librarian, and

Andrew Dickson White Andrew Dickson White (November 7, 1832 – November 4, 1918) was an American historian and educator who co-founded Cornell University, one of eight Ivy League universities in the United States, and served as its first president for nearly two de ...

, Cornell University's first president, both willed their entire estates to Cornell University following their deaths. Under Fiske's direction, Cornell's library introduced a number of innovations, including allowing undergraduate students to browse through the books and check them out. By 1885, the library had installed electric lights and stayed open 12 hours per day (instead of only a few hours per week—as most other libraries at American universities did at the time—just enough time for faculty to check out and return books), which allowed students to use it as a reference library.

Initiatives

The library plays an active role in furthering online archiving of scientific and historical documents. It provides stewardship and partial funding for arXiv.org e-print archive, created at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy ...

Paul Ginsparg Paul Henry Ginsparg is an American physicist. He developed the arXiv.org e-print archive. Education He is a graduate of Syosset High School in Syosset, New York, on Long Island. He graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in ...

. arXiv has changed the way many physicists and mathematicians communicate, making the eprint a viable and popular form for announcing new research. The

Project Euclid Project Euclid is a collaborative partnership between Cornell University Library and Duke University Press which seeks to advance scholarly communication in theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics through partnerships with independent a ...

initiative, named after

Euclid Euclid (; ; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of geometry that largely domina ...

Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

, is a resource joining commercial journals with low-cost independent journals in mathematics and statistics. The project is aimed at enabling affordable scholarly communication through the Internet. Besides archival purposes, a primary goal of the project is to facilitate journal searches and interoperability between different publishers. The Cornell Library Digital Collections are online collections of historical documents. Featured collections include the Database of African-American Poetry, the Historic Math Book Collection, the Samuel May Anti-Slavery Collection, the Witchcraft Collection, and the Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection.

Rare holdings

The library houses several rare manuscripts, including one of only five copies of

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...

Gettysburg Address The Gettysburg Address is a Public speaking, speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, U.S. president, following the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. The speech has come to be viewed as one ...

(1863), the only copy that is privately owned and the only one accompanied both by a letter from Lincoln transmitting the manuscript and by the original envelope addressed and franked by Lincoln. The library houses cuneiform tablets; a major collection of medieval books and witchcraft trial records; thousands of pamphlets produced during the French Revolution; and the correspondence between Jefferson and Lafayette. It also holds a copy of '' The Birds of America,'' of which only 120 complete sets are known to exist. The library also has first editions of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

's '' Origin of Species'' (1859), the

Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, first published in 1830 by Joseph Smith as ''The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi''. The book is one of ...

(1830), and of

Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...

's ''

Pride and Prejudice ''Pride and Prejudice'' is the second published novel (but third to be written) by English author Jane Austen, written when she was age 20-21, and later published in 1813. A novel of manners, it follows the character development of Elizabe ...

'' (1813). The rare manuscript collection also includes a 1st edition copy of Thomas Hobbe's

Leviathan Leviathan ( ; ; ) is a sea serpent demon noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, and the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch. Leviathan is of ...

from 1651. The Rare and Manuscript Collection is housed in the Cornell Library System’s Carl A. Kroch Library. With more than 500,000 printed volumes and 20,000 cubic feet of manuscript materials, the collection is vast and useful to the faculty and staff of Cornell University, as well as the public who can access any of the collection that has been digitized. The collection dates back to the university’s founding in 1865, by the first president of the university Andrew Dickson White. In 1891, the collection received its founder’s 30,000-volume collection. Specifically, the Department of Rare Books was founded in 1951 and was absorbed into the Rare and Manuscript Collection in 1992, the year the current physical location opened its doors. The 14 main collections within the Rare and Manuscript Collection are the: American History & Culture, Architecture & City Planning, Asian History & Culture, Cornell University Archives, Digital Collections, European History & Culture, Food, Wine, and Culinary History, Icelandic History & Culture, Literature & Theater, Moving Images & Sound Recordings, Music, Photographs, Science & Technology, and Sexuality & Gender. The Rare and Manuscript collection houses the largest collection on the French Revolution outside of Paris, the largest collection in North America on European witchcraft, America’s founding collection on the abolitionist movement, and the second largest William Wordsworth Collection.

Significant collections

Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art

Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art is a research repository for

new media art New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of new media, electronic media technologies. It comprises virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robo ...

. It was founded in 2002 by Timothy Murray, Professor of Comparative Literature and English and Director of the Society for the

Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

. It is located in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University Library and it is named in honor of the late Prof. Rose Goldsen, a

Sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

Professor at

and an avant-garde critic of

pop culture Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art pop_art.html" ;"title="f. pop art">f. pop artor mass art, some ...

mass media Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises b ...

and

communication Communication is commonly defined as the transmission of information. Its precise definition is disputed and there are disagreements about whether Intention, unintentional or failed transmissions are included and whether communication not onl ...

. The Rose Goldsen Archive provides access to detailed archival material that mirrors the historical changes which have happened in

in terms of its technological development and experimentation, throughout the years.

General Collection

The archive's collections include multimedia artworks that reflect the transformation of new media art practices from analog to disc-based and from there to networked and

web-based application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

during the past decades. The collections combine artworks produced on CD/ DVD-Rom, VHS/

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

and internet (online and offline holdings) as well as supporting materials, such as unpublished manuscripts and designs, digital and photographic documentation of installations and performances, digital ephemera, interviews, photographs, catalogs, monographs, and resource guides to

. The general collection consists of various material about audio, sound art, eco and bio art, exhibitions, artist compilations, installations, interactive narrative, poetry, online listserv, internet art journals, performance, theory, video art, and cinema. Among the artists whose work can be found in the general collection are Gary Hill, Iimura Takahiko, Ardele Lister,

Michael Snow Michael James Aleck Snow (December 10, 1928 – January 5, 2023) was a Canadian artist who worked in a range of media including film, installation, sculpture, photography, and music. His best-known films are ''Wavelength'' (1967) and '' La Rég ...

, Janet Cardiff, Chantal Akerman, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Shu Lea Cheang, and others. The collection contains work ranging from the 1960s up to the present day.

Special Collections

Apart from the general collection, the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art houses many special collections and fellowship competitions. Some of them are the following:
The Renew Media Fellowships in New Media, an annual competition for interactive dynamic media, was funded by the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...

in New Media Art from 2002. The Goldsen Archive serves as the repository for the digitized copies of this competition material, such as the proposals, slides, artists' portfolios, other supportive material, etc. from 2003 to 2008.
The Wen Pulin Archive of Chinese Avant-Garde Art, a collaboration among the Goldsen Archive, the Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia at Cornell University Library and the Dongtai Academy of Art in

Beijing, China Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

consists of 360 hours of videotape that documents Chinese contemporary art, installation, performance, video, and rock n' roll from 1985 to 2002. Some of the artists that are showcased in the collection are Cui Jian, Du Zhenjun, Feng Mengbo, Li Xianting, Lin Yilin, Lu Shengzhong, Mou Sen,

Song Dong Song Dong (, born 1966) is a Chinese contemporary artist, active in sculpture, Installation art, installations, performance, photography and video. He has been involved in many solo and group exhibitions around the world, covering a range of them ...

, Song Yongping, Xu Bing, Yu Xiaofu, Zhang Dali, Zhou Shaobo, Chen Lingyang.
The Yao Jui-Chung Archive of Contemporary Taiwanese Art contains the Taiwanese artist Yao Jui-Chung's portfolio, 8,000 images of Contemporary Art Exhibition Postcards and Taiwan performance art.
The "ETC: Experimental Television Center Archives" is a collection with more than 3,000 artistic

video tapes Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocasset ...

and

DVDs The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

. It contains works by artists from both the contemporary and first generation of

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. V ...

. The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art has served as a repository for the Experimental Television Center's collection (1969-2011), since 2011. Some of the artists that are showcased in the collection are Barbara Hammer, Gary Hill, Jud Yalkut, Aldo Tambellini, Benton C Bainbridge, Irit Batsry, Alan Berliner, Kristin Lucas, Lynne Sachs, Michael Betancourt, Abigail Child, Laurence Gartel and Barbara Lattanzi, Emergency Broadcast Network,

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a South Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" ...

, Kathy High, etc.
Net Art: The Goldsen Archive provides access to a number of internet art collections. It is the off-line repository for the Turbulence.org archive, a project of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA), the Computerfinearts.com and the Infos 2000. In addition, the Archive serves as an on-line repository for the online journal of net.art, CTHEORY Multimedia and the Ecopoetics online exhibition.

Preservation

Because of the fragility and the complexity of the artworks, most of which are

born-digital The term born-digital refers to materials that originate in a Digital data, digital form.NDIIPP"Preserving Digital Culture,"Library of Congress. This is in contrast to digital reformatting, through which analog recording, analog materials become D ...

and many of which are

interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

, the Archive focuses on building archival strategies that endure the continuous access to all this fragile material. The Goldsen Archive is one of the six international digital art archives dedicated to Preservation and Documentation Strategies; other similar archives are

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in t ...

, Tate Intermedia, FACT, computerfinearts.com (which has its repository in Goldsen Archive) and Rhizome Artbase. In addition, the Archive has signed the International Declaration "Media Art Needs Global Networked Organization and Support", sponsored by Media Art History. Org. The Goldsen Archive has completed a

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

- funded preservation initiative that aims to make access to complex interactive and digital-born media artworks simple and more reliable, which will allow these artworks to be used and viewed on modern computers.

Other collections

* Agriculture collections ** The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture * Asia collections ** Echols Collection on Southeast Asia ** Wason Collection on East-Asia ** South Asia Collection * Cornell Hip Hop Collection * Fiske Icelandic Collection * Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and History (HEARTH) * Human Sexuality Collection * Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library (KMODDL)
Movies and photos of hundreds of working mechanical-systems models at Cornell University. Also includes an e-book library of classic texts on mechanical design and engineering. * Making of America Collection * Ornithology collection * Race and Religion Collection * The Rose Goldsen Archive of New media Art serves as a repository for many special collections and fellowship competitions, such as: ** The Repository of the Experimental Television Center ** Foundation Fellowships in New Media Art ** The Wen Pulin Archive of Chinese Avant-Garde Art ** The Lynn Hershman Leeson archive * Samuel May Anti-Slavery Collection * Witchcraft Collection * Other digital collections

Units

Adelson Library
( Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
Africana Library
(Africana Studies and Research Center) * Catherwood Library ( Industrial and Labor Relations Library) * Engineering Library (Carpenter Hall)
Geneva Experiment Station Library
*Kroch Library
Asia Collections
an
Rare and Manuscript CollectionsLaw LibraryManagement Library
(

Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management The Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management is the graduate business school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League research university in Ithaca, New York. Established in 1946, Johnson is one of six List of Ivy League business schools ...

, Sage Hall)
Mann LibraryMathematics Library
(Malott Hall)
Medical Library
( Weill Cornell Medical Library)
Mui Ho Fine Arts Library
(Rand Hall)
Music Library
(Lincoln Hall)
Nestlé Library
( School of Hotel Administration Library)
Olin & Uris Libraries
(

Uris Library Uris Library is a library on the campus of Cornell University, located at the southwest corner of the Arts Quad overlooking Libe Slope. The oldest library building at Cornell, Uris Library also houses the A. D. White Library, "a library within ...

and Olin Library)
Physical Sciences Library
(virtual)
Veterinary Library (Flower-Sprecher Veterinary Library)

References

External links

Cornell University Library

Library bridge page

Cornell University Library's digital collections

Unit libraries

Tutorials for library preservation and conservation
{{authority control

University and college academic libraries in New York (state) Federal depository libraries Library buildings completed in the 19th century 1866 establishments in New York (state) School buildings completed in 1866