The Cecil H. Green Library (commonly known as Green Library) is the main library on the

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

campus and is part of the SUL system. It is named for

Cecil H. Green Cecil Howard Green (August 6, 1900 – April 11, 2003) was a British-born American geophysicist, electrical engineer, and electronics manufacturing executive, who trained at the University of British Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of T ...

. Green Library houses 4 million volumes, most of which are related to the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at t ...

and

social sciences Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...

. Libraries elsewhere on campus cover specialized areas such as Business, Law, Art, Medicine, or Engineering. Books from Green and other Stanford libraries are being scanned as part of the

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

project.

History

The earliest library at Stanford was in the inner quadrangle. It was housed in one large room capable of accommodating 100 readers. This was replaced in 1900 by a separate building on the outer quadrangle, named the

Thomas Welton Stanford Thomas Welton Stanford (1832–1918), also known as Welton Stanford, was an American-born Australian businessman, spiritualist and philanthropist, most notably toward Stanford University, which was founded by his older brother Leland Stanford. A ...

library after its major donor. This library was recognized as being too small, and a new larger library in a separate building was begun, but it was destroyed in the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity ...

before it could be occupied. A major new library was approved in 1913 and completed in 1919. This building forms the older portion of the Green Library. In 1980, a larger annex was added and the library renamed for Cecil H. Green. The original part of the building is now known as the Bing Wing for Peter Bing, who donated a substantial amount of money for fixing it after the

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of t ...

Design

Green Library's design was a significant and early departure from the architectural style of Stanford's Main Quad.

Jane Stanford Jane Elizabeth Lathrop Stanford (August 25, 1828 – February 28, 1905) was an American philanthropist, co-founder of Stanford University in 1885 (opened 1891) along with her husband, Leland Stanford, as a memorial to their only child, Leland ...

held a design competition for the new library and chose the submission of Joseph MacKay, a San Francisco art glassmaker, which drew more on Romanesque style than the existing buildings. Several stories tall, this original construction was refurbished in 1999 and now forms the main halls and rotunda of the library.

References

External links

Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources

Information Center, Green Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Green Library University and college academic libraries in the United States Stanford University libraries Library buildings completed in 1980 Federal depository libraries California State depository libraries Libraries in Santa Clara County, California Buildings and structures destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake

History

Design

See also

References

External links