McGill University Library is the library system of

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

Montréal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Québec Quebec is Canada's largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, New Brunswick to the southeast and a coastal border ...

, Canada. It comprises 13 branch libraries, located on the downtown Montreal and Macdonald campuses, holding over 11.78 million items. It is the fourth-largest research intensive academic library in Canada.

Description

The largest of the branch libraries is the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, which is housed in the McLennan and

Redpath Library Redpath Hall is a historic building at 3461 McTavish Street in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on the main campus of McGill University. It was originally the reading room of the Redpath Library, which opened in 1893 as McGill's first dedicated library ...

Buildings. The Humanities and Social Sciences Library has notable collections in Canadian Studies,

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

and

American Literature American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the British colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also ...

British History The history of the British Isles began with its sporadic human habitation during the Palaeolithic from around 900,000 years ago. The British Isles has been continually occupied since the early Holocene, the current geological epoch, which star ...

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

and East European Studies, and

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. The Library's ROAAr Group was formed in 2016 to unite

Rare Books and Special Collections Rare may refer to: * Rare, a particular temperature of meat * Something infrequent or scarce, see Scarcity :* Rare species, a conservation category in biology designating the scarcity of an organism and implying a threat to its viability Rare o ...

, The Osler Library of the History of Medicine, The Visual Arts Collection, and Archives and Records Management. Rare Books and Special collections contains holdings on a variety of subjects, including art and architecture, Canadiana, history, literature, the

history of ideas Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual hist ...

, travel and exploration, and the history of the book. The Lawrence Lande Collection of Canadiana consists of 12,000 items, including books, pamphlets, maps, prints, periodicals, government documents, and broadsides. The

Osler Library of the History of Medicine The Osler Library, a branch of the McGill University Library and part of ROAAr since 2016, is Canada's foremost scholarly resource for the history of medicine, and one of the most important libraries of its type in North America. It is located ...

, in the McIntyre Medical Building, is Canada's foremost scholarly resource in the

history of medicine The history of medicine is both a study of medicine throughout history as well as a multidisciplinary field of study that seeks to explore and understand medical practices, both past and present, throughout human societies. The history of med ...

, and one of the most important libraries of its type in North America. As of 2011, the Humanities and Social Sciences Library and the Schulich Library of Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Engineering are open 24/7 in most cases during midterms and finals during the academic year. The

Islamic Studies Library The holdings of the Islamic Studies Library, a branch of the McGill University Library, stand together with those of the Robarts Library of the University of Toronto as the premier library resources in Canada for research on the Islamic world and ...

, located in Morrice Hall with the

McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies The McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies and the Islamic Studies Library were established in 1952 by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and since 1983 both have been housed in Morrice Hall on McGill University, McGill's campus in downtown Montreal, Q ...

that prepares graduate students for M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, is one of the largest collections of its kind in Canada. The McGill University Library's Cyberthèque – a large-scale, multi-purpose information facility – opened its doors to McGill students in 2008. Located in the Redpath Library Building at street level, the "experiential" Cyberthèque blends a diverse range of studying and learning spaces for groups and individuals, various technology and multi-media installations, and timely assistance in accessing and using information. This unique facility was designed by Montréal architect François Emond and his team at ékm architecture together with Douglas Birkenshaw, and his team at Bregmann + Hamann from Toronto.

Branch libraries

Birks Reading Room * Humanities and Social Sciences Library * Blackader-Lauterman Collection of Architecture and Art *

* Education Curriculum Resource Centre * Edward Rosenthall Mathematics and Statistics Library * MacDonald Campus Library * Marvin Duchow Music Library * Nahum Gelber Law Library * Schulich Library of Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Engineering

Special Branches (ROAAr Units)

* Rare Books and Special Collections *

McGill University Archives The McGill University Archives (MUA) performs integrated archival and records management for McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founde ...

* Visual Arts Collection

Partnerships and collaboration

The Library is a member of the

Canadian Association of Research Libraries The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) was established in 1976 and brings together thirty-one research libraries. Twenty-nine members are university libraries, plus Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and the National Research Counci ...

, the

Association of Research Libraries The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research library at comprehensive, research institutions in Canada and the United States. ARL member libraries make up a large portion of the academic and research li ...

(ARL), and the Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec (CREPUQ), as well as other cooperative groups. The Library is a contributor to the

Open Content Alliance The Open Content Alliance (OCA) was a consortium of organizations contributing to a permanent, publicly accessible archive of digitized texts. Its creation was announced in October 2005 by Yahoo!, the Internet Archive, the University of California ...

Projects

As of 2010, one of the Library's major projects involves digitization of books in the public domain. In 2013 the McGill library became the second non-US based partner institution with

HathiTrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries. Its holdings include content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digit ...

digital library and plans on making their digitized collections available through this repository. The library regularly contributes unique digitized public domain from their collections to the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

History

From 1862 to 1893 the library was located in the west wing of the Arts Building (Molson Hall), where the collection slowly expanded. In 1893 the Redpath Library opened in what is now

Redpath Hall Redpath Hall is a historic building at 3461 McTavish Street in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on the main campus of McGill University. It was originally the reading room of the Redpath Library, which opened in 1893 as McGill's first dedicated library ...

. At the same time, the first full-time University Librarian, Charles H. Gould (1893–1919) was appointed. Under Gould and Gerhard Lomer (1920–1947) both the collection and staff expanded. By the 1920s and 1930s the central library's lack of space meant that there was more departmental and area libraries being established. In 1952 a large addition to

was opened to the south and the east wall of the original building was enclosed. It was at this time the library reading room was moved over what is now known at the Redpath library building and the Hall became a music hall. It was during this time that the University Librarian became primarily responsible for this main library collection that covered the humanities and social sciences discipline. Area libraries in Medicine, Law, Engineering, Physical Sciences, Divinity, Nursing and other disciplines were still largely independent. In 1969, McLennan Library (Humanities and Social Sciences) opened, and Senate set up a University Libraries Commission whose Report (1971) recommended reorganization and greater coordination in the administration of the library systems.

References

External links

McGill Library Official website''Fontanus: from the collections of McGill University''
library journal
Medical Library Archives Collection
Osler Library Archives, McGill University. Collection of primary sources documenting the growth of the Medical Library at McGill University. {{authority control Libraries in Montreal McGill University Academic libraries in Canada