The Most Beautiful College/University Libraries in the World

So since I’m in university, I feel that it is most unjust that my own university’s library isn’t as beautiful as my 10 favourite ones below. Which ones are your favourites?

The University of Coimbra General Library, Coimbra, Portugal

The Trinity College Library, aka “The Long Room,” Dublin, Ireland

Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

George Peabody Library, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Queen’s College Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

Lehigh University Library, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Andrew Dickson White Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Old Library, St. John’s College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

Duke Humfrey’s Library, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, Manchester, England, UK

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12 thoughts on “The Most Beautiful College/University Libraries in the World”

I’m drooling. Just drooling…oh,my…these are so amazing. I need them all… :)

backtothebookshelf

March 25, 2012 at 2:45 pm

I quite agree! I was going to say I was drooling as well :)

Reply

Fabulous! And I’ve only been to 2 of them :( Do you actually have access to all of these?? Only one I’ve had access to as a reader was the Bodleian and I never had occasion to do more than admire Duke Humfrey’s from afar. I’ve got a post that mentions it somewhere, though…

Found it! http://mefoley.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/%E2%80%99elf-and-safety/ — mentions the Duke Humfrey’s library, and why students aren’t allowed to get at the books there any more.

My favourite academic library is still Stanford’s Green Library, I suppose, since I spent so much time there, and they had the most comfortable chairs ever, enormous purple squashy things. I knew a kid who lived in the library one quarter when he didn’t have anyplace else, and slept in the those purple chairs; he said that if you didn’t get out of the chair all night, the motion sensors wouldn’t get you and set off the alarms…

Wow. They look like cathedrals to learning. One can only marvel – and rejoice – in the minds that created and maintain these incredible structures. It restores faith in mankind. Thanks for sharing that.

Those are beautiful libraries. I would be afraid to touch anything. All the libraries look like the ones where you need a specialist’s gloves to look at the book. I was sick yesterday, and I feel asleep watching a special about Thomas Jefferson. He cut passages out of the Bible in English, Greek, Latin, French and another language. He cut out the “moral passages” and had a book binder assemble it as a book in what they said was a European style or more tightly bound. Needless to say the scienctist/ historian had to take it apart to even examine the pages.
I apologize for the rambling. I do not know what I would consider the prettiest library. You’ve made me think. The University of South Carolina’s Thomas Copper library was not inspiring, but as a history student, I did a lot of work in the South Carolinana Library. It was the original. It has the old shelves, the columns outside and its full of history on the walls and in the designs.