Fondren Library is the main library of

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universit ...

in Houston, Texas. The library is named for Walter W. Fondren, a co-founder of the

Humble Oil & Refining Company Humble Oil and Refining Co. is a defunct American oil company founded in 1911 in Humble, Texas. In 1919, a 50% interest in Humble was acquired by the Standard Oil of New Jersey which acquired the rest of the company in September 1959. The Humbl ...

, whose family donated $1 million in 1946 for construction of the library. The building was designed by Houston architect John F. Staub and was notable for its open stack arrangement and

art deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

influence in the architecture. The library was dedicated on November 4, 1949. The library celebrated its 60th birthday in 2009. An addition to the back of the building in 1969, formally known as the Graduate Research Wing, added of research space including study rooms, stacks space, and space for the library's special collections, the

Woodson Research Center Woodson Research Center is an archive located in Fondren Library at Rice University in Houston, Texas. The Center is named for Benjamin N. Woodson and houses the special collections of Rice University's Fondren Library which includes manuscript ...

(named for

Benjamin Woodson Benjamin N. "Woody" Woodson (June 5, 1908–July 17, 2001), born in Altoona, Kansas, was an insurance executive and philanthropist who was known as "Mr. Life Insurance."

). In December 1997, the Hobby Foundation designated $21.4 million specifically for improvements in Fondren Library. This gift allowed for additional space planning including the building in 2004 of the Library Service Center, a high-density offsite shelving facility that houses less-used materials in a climate-controlled environment. In 2005-06, Fondren underwent an extensive renovation creating access through the entire library, a new first-floor Hobby Information commons, and a Rice-only study space on the sixth floor with dynamic views of the campus. ox, Stephen. Rice University: The Campus Guide. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001 Consultation Among Institution Precedes Library Design: Fondren Library, The Rice Institute, Houston, Texas." Architectural Record (June 1950): 136-42.

Mission statement

The mission statement is as follows: "The mission of the Fondren Library of Rice University is to support the highest aspirations of the University in the areas of research, teaching, and service, through innovative research and information services, access to scholarly resources, collaborative alliances, and provision and shared use of physical and virtual spaces."

Collections

Fondren Library currently subscribes to more than 141,000 journals in multiple formats and houses more than 2.8 million print volumes and 3 million microforms. The library is a selective depository of U.S. and Texas government publications and a depository for U.S. patents and trademarks.

contains more than 475 manuscript collections with emphasis on Texas, Houston, history, science, and English literature. Woodson contains more than 475 manuscript collections focused on the history of

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

and the greater

Houston Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...

area,

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...

entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

, and oil and gas. Other subject areas include

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by state ...

history, hip hop/rap music-related materials from the Swishahouse record label, science, and literary authors with Rice connections. Also in the Center are the papers of

faculty members and alumni with achievements in the humanities, sciences, engineering, and the arts. Woodson also contains substantial materials related to the composer

Francis Poulenc Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-kn ...

, the biologist

Julian Huxley Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthes ...

, and the Houston businessman and politician

Jesse H. Jones Jesse Holman Jones (April 5, 1874June 1, 1956) was an American Democratic politician and entrepreneur from Houston, Texas. Jones managed a Tennessee tobacco factory at age fourteen, and at nineteen, he was put in charge of his uncle's lumber ...

References

External links

Fondren Library home pageFondren Library mobile website
{{authority control Library buildings completed in 1949 Rice University University and college academic libraries in the United States Art Deco architecture in Texas Federal depository libraries