About CU Library : Library Information : History and Purpose

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History and Purpose

Cornell University’s founder, Ezra Cornell, had a vision for the new university of "an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." The university’s first president, Andrew Dickson White, was a bookish man — a scholar who loved the pursuit of knowledge and was an astute book collector. Together, they knew and appreciated the value and necessity of assembling a proper library for the students and faculty.

When Cornell University opened its doors in the fall of 1868, its library of about 18,000 volumes was temporarily housed in two rooms of Morrill Hall — the only building completed at that time. Earlier that year, President White had traveled through Europe seeking items for the university’s new library. Back in Ithaca, Willard Fiske, Cornell’s first librarian, worked to ensure that the university’s collections would be, above all, a practical reference library, openly accessible to both students and faculty members. The materials White and Fiske acquired covered almost the whole range of the humanities and provided the nucleus for most of the university’s great early collections. Later, White and Fiske would be among the first donors to give their personal libraries to Cornell, thereby enriching a number of collections that were already unparalleled in the United States.

Today, based on the number of volumes in its collections, Cornell University Library (CUL) is one of the twelve largest academic research libraries in the United States. Within its 20 unit libraries, holdings number more than 7 million volumes and 7 million microforms. CUL subscribes to nearly 65,000 journals and serial publications, and provides access to more than 100,000 networked databases and other electronic resources. More than 115,000 volumes are added to the Library’s collections each year. See Collection Statistics.

As CUL anticipates the future, it is successfully using the latest tools and technologies to make its growing collections more readily accessible to users across campus, and indeed, around the world. At the same time, preservation and conservation efforts are taking place to ensure that key research materials will continue to be available to current and future scholars. First and foremost, the Library is a living, working, ever-expanding scholarly resource — a vital and integral component in the tremendous variety of educational programs and research projects under way at Cornell.