Join us for any or all of our stress-relief activities. No RSVP required!

Welcome to Columbia University Libraries!  We are happy to offer several tours of our various library spaces during the first few weeks of classes.  (For information about ALL library locations, please visit our locations page).

Butler Library:
Tuesday, 9/8 – 4pm
Wednesday, 9/9 – 4pm
Thursday, 9/10 – 4pm
Friday, 9/11 – 4pm
Wednesday, 9/16 – 4pm
Thursday, 9/17 – 4pm
Friday, 9/18 – 4pm

**All tours meet in Butler Library lobby near the security desk at 4pm.  Sign up here, or show up in person.

Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library:
Thursday, 9/10 – 12pm
Friday, 9/11 – 12pm
Tuesday, 9/15 – 12pm
Thursday,  9/17 – 12pm
Friday, 9/18 – 12pm
Monday, 9/21 – 12pm
Tuesday, 9/22 – 12pm
Thursday, 9/24 – 12pm
Friday, 9259 – 12pm

Tours open to all students.   Tours last 45 minutes; limited to 15 people/tour; sign-up sheets at the Avery Library Service Desk.  Tours meet at the Service Desk.

Lehman Social Sciences Library
Tuesday, 9/8 – 10am
Wednesday, 9/9 – 10am
Thursday, 9/10 – 12pm

Starr East Asian Library
Tuesday, 9/8 – 3pm
Wednesday, 9/9 – 10:30am & 3pm
Thursday, 9/10 – 10:30am & 3pm
Friday, 9/11 – 10:30am & 3pm
Saturday, 9/12 – 3pm
Monday, 9/14 – 10:30am & 3pm
Tuesday, 9/15 – 10:30am & 3pm
Wednesday, 9/16 – 10:30am & 3pm
Thursday, 9/17 – 10:30am & 3pm
Tours open to all students.  Tours meet at the Service Desk.

Click here for iPod tours of Starr East Asian Library
Available in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan.

The Libraries have partnered with the Columbia College Student Council (CCSC) and General Studies Student Council (GSSC) to provide loans of commonly-used laptop chargers. CCSC and GSCC purchased six laptop chargers available for check-out from the Butler Library Reserves desk (208 Butler Library). These chargers are available for four-hour loans to students, faculty, and staff who have forgotten their laptop chargers. This is a pilot program that will run through the 2014-2015 academic year.

“The Libraries are delighted to partner with CCSC and GSSC to provide lending of commonly used Mac, Toshiba, and Dell laptop chargers,” said Francie Mrkich, Director of Access Services. CCSC At Large Representative to Academic Affairs Grayson Warrick adds, “We hope that with this program, we can save time and hassle for students who may forget to bring their chargers to Butler.

For a complete list of chargers available, see Laptop Chargers Loan Pilot Program on the Libraries website.

Columbia University Libraries / Information Systems is pleased to announce the beta launch of our new Digital Library Collections website. The new site combines into one platform the digital content and metadata from many of our digital special collections projects and online exhibitions. Until now, all of our digital projects’ content has been managed within separate, standalone web/database applications and discoverable only in that context.  In the new system, our digital content may be viewed project-by-project or by using a keyword search across all available projects. The new site will also allow us to integrate streaming video and audio into the content. In the future we expect our Digital Library Collections also to be discoverable within the Columbia’s aggregated CLIO search system as well as from the Digital Public Library of America.

Your feedback will greatly benefit our development process.  Please visit the site and use the Feedback function in the Help menu at the top right hand corner or at the bottom of the page. We will also be doing formal user testing during the beta period. The full public launch of the website is planned for Winter 2014. Improvements and additional content ingest will continue after launch, and we welcome your continued thoughts and questions as issues arise. The URL is: https://dlc.library.columbia.edu/

Welcome to Columbia University Libraries!  We are happy to offer several tours of our various library spaces during the first few weeks of classes.  (For information about ALL library locations, please visit our locations page).

Butler Library:
Tuesday, 9/2 – 4pm
Wednesday, 9/3 – 4pm
Thursday, 9/4 – 4pm
Friday, 9/5 – 4pm

**All tours meet in Butler Library lobby near the security desk at 4pm.  Sign up here, or show up in person.

Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library:
Thursday, 9/4 – 12pm
Friday, 9/5 – 12pm
Monday, 9/8 – 12pm
Tuesday, 9/9 – 12pm
Thursday,  9/11 – 12pm
Friday, 9/12 – 12pm
Monday, 9/15 – 12pm
Tuesday, 9/16 – 12pm
Thursday, 9/18 – 12pm
Friday, 9/19 – 12pm

**Tours open to all students.   Tours last 45 minutes; limited to 15 people/tour; sign-up sheets at the Avery Library Service Desk.  Tours meet at the Service Desk.

Global Studies
Monday, September 8th – 4pm
South Asia (Southeast Asia also, per interest) library resources tour at 308-309 Lehman Library.

**The tour will start with a sit down talk/discussion and continue with a tour of various libraries with specific emphasis on South Asia/Southeast Asia library content.

Starr East Asian Library
Thursday, September 4th – 3pm-5pm
300 Kent Hall

**Tours open to all students.  Tours meet at the Service Desk.

Graduate Student – “Getting Your Bearings” Orientations
If you’re a graduate student, you may wish to attend one of our “Getting Your Bearings” orientations, designed to help you begin using the powerful information tools at your disposal and to point you to some of the most important library services and personnel at Butler Library and elsewhere on campus.

Wednesday August 27  at 4:00 pm
Thursday  August 28 at 2:00 pm
Tuesday September 2 at 3:30 pm
Wednesday September 3 at 2:00 pm
Thursday September 4 at 12:00 pm
Thursday September 4 at 3:30 pm

**The sessions begin with a 40 to 45 minute tour of key points and  services in Butler Library, including an intro to our Rare Book and Manuscript library.  This is likely to be of most interest and  relevance to people working in the humanities, history, and social sciences. The tours will begin at the Reference Desk in  Butler 301.  The second half of the session,  which will take place in Butler  203, will be devoted to an overview of the Libraries’ online information  system and ways to get the most out of it, and would be of value to all graduate students.  Participants who want to attend only the second half should feel free  come directly to Butler 203 (on 8/27, 9/2, 9/3 and 9/4) or Butler 306 (on Thursday 8/28) about 40 to 45 minutes after the beginning  of the tour.

Happy Spring!  Finals are just around the corner, and we want to ensure you are informed about the availability of study space in library facilities during finals this semester.  The Study Spaces Open Now page shows which libraries are currently open, and the Library Hours page provides a calendar view for each library’s hours of operation.  For a full list of study spaces in library facilities, please visit the Study Spaces page.

From May 1 through May 15, Watson Library will be open to graduate students, faculty, staff, and undergraduates in Economics and Business (GS) Monday through Friday from 8am – 7pm.  At all other times the library will be open to all valid Columbia ID holders.  Others who need library resources or research assistance found only at Watson Library during restricted hours may request access and assistance at the circulation desk.  Watson Library is open to all Columbia affiliates during other times throughout the semester.

We will also continue to extend access during the finals period at other library facilities as follows:

• The Science & Engineering Library will offer study hall hours until 3am Sundays through Thursday until the end of the semester.
• Lehman Social Sciences Library will hold study hall hours until 4am through the end of the semester.
• Butler Library will continue to be open for study 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the semester.  Beginning April 21, 24-hour study will be extended to reading rooms on the 5th and 6th floors through the end of the semester.

Great news:  439,141 bibliographic records from the Columbia Law School Library catalog have been loaded into the Columbia Libraries catalog (CLIO).  Researchers in a variety of disciplines such as human rights, history, gender, international relations, and early church history can now find relevant material without checking each catalog separately. Law is now the fourth largest collection in the catalog after Offsite and Online (each at 2.6 million) and Butler Stacks (1.07 million).

As a reminder, improving our online catalog is a continuous process – this addition is the first of a series of important additions to our catalog in the near future.  Your feedback is a vital component to our work.  We welcome comments and suggestions for improving CLIO.  Please use the Suggestions & Feedback form under the “Help” menu in the upper right corner of CLIO, or Ask a Librarian.

CLIO is built on top of the open-source Blacklight search and discovery engine in use at many peer institutions including Stanford, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin, and Johns Hopkins University. The underlying technologies powering the search are the open-source search index SOLR and the Ruby on Rails web framework.  

Keep up with the latest additions and improvements to CLIO by following the CLIO News blog.

The Gabe M. Wiener Music & Arts Library Exhibits scores by Marcelo Toledo

The Music & Arts Library has mounted an exhibition of works by Marcelo Toledo entitled Northern Skies.   Toledo, an Adjunct Assistant Professor Music in the Music Department at Columbia University was born in Argentina in 1964.  His compositions have been presented at International festivals and new music concerts for over 10 years. 

Presented in the exhibition are images of scores entitled Noturno (2010), Dos miradas fugaces a la noche (2012), and Luminous emptiness (2012).  All of these works derive their sonic elements from the images of 21 constellations visible in the northern hemisphere for part of the year.

Toledo’s writes, “A permanent back and forth between sound material and its notation occurs in the representation of musical ideas.  The clear representation of visual materials re-injects new possibilities into the compositional process.  The flexibility of the mechanism of representation expands the musical materials and opens—in an almost rhizomatic way—the intermediate states of the sound/image relationship.”

Toledo’s interest in the visual representation in music was first presented in the solo exhibition Sound Object at The LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Columbia University School of the Arts in 2004.  

The exhibition is on display near the entrance of the library.  Please visit the Music & Arts Library hours page for viewing times.  

We want to ensure you are informed about policy changes regarding access to library facilities during finals this semester.  Upon examination of usage data during the Spring 2013 finals period, we confirmed that study space in the Watson Library of Business & Economics was underutilized on evenings and weekends. Thus, in consultation with student leaders and the Business School administration, we have revised access policies during the upcoming finals period accordingly.

From December 2nd through December 18th, Watson Library will be open to all graduate students, faculty, staff, and to undergraduates in Economics and Business (GS) Monday through Friday from 8am – 7pm.  At all other times the library will be open to all valid Columbia ID holders.  Watson Library will be open until 12am Sundays – Fridays and until 9pm on Saturdays during this period. Watson will also offer extended study hall hours until 3am, open to all, the week of December 8th –  Full listing of hours can be found here.  Others who need library resources or research assistance found only at Watson Library during restricted hours may request access and assistance at the circulation desk.  Watson Library is open to all Columbia affiliates during other times throughout the semester.

We will also continue to extend access during the finals period at other library facilities as follows:

• The Science & Engineering Library will continue to offer study hall hours until 3am Sundays through Thursdays, running through the end of the semester.
• Lehman Social Sciences Library will hold study hall hours until 4am seven days a week starting December 2nd.
• Butler Library will continue to be open for study 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the semester.   Starting November 20th, 24-hour study will be extended to reading rooms on the 5th and 6th floor.

Check the Library Hours page for more information.  Also, please visit the new Study Spaces Open Now feature on the Library hours page, which provides real-time updates about which spaces are currently open, plus hours for that day.  For a full list of study spaces within Libraries facilities, please see our Study Spaces page.

Exam periods are right around the corner, and we want to make sure you are informed about access to the libraries during midterms and finals this semester.  The updates below outline access policy changes happening throughout the semester for several libraries.  The new Study Space Open Now page shows you which libraries are currently open in real time (bookmark that page!), and the Library Hours page provides a calendar view for each library’s hours of operation.  For a full list of library facilities, please visit the Study Spaces guide.  Also, don’t forget about the Room Scheduler to book a room for practicing presentations, holding group meetings, etc.

• The Science & Engineering Library will begin study hall hours until 3 a.m. on October 4, Sundays through Thursdays, running through the end of the semester. During the weekend of midterms and finals, the study hall hours will be extended to Friday and Saturday.
• During the last four weeks of the semester, the Lehman Social Sciences Library will hold study hall hours until 4 a.m. seven days a week.
• Butler Library will continue to be open for study 24-hours a day, seven days a week during the semester.  During the last four weeks of the semester, 24-hour study will be extended to reading rooms on the 5th and 6th floors.
• During midterms and finals, the Business & Economics Library will be open to all graduate students, faculty, staff, and to undergraduate Economics majors only. Others who need library resources or research assistance found only at the Business & Economics Library may request access and assistance at the circulating desk.  During the Fall semester, this policy will apply October 7-21 and December 2-18.  The Business & Economics Library is open to all Columbia affiliates other times throughout the semester.