In 1983, Penn State football coach Joe Paterno challenged the university's Board of Trustees to make Penn State number one in academics as well as athletics, stating, "You can’t have a great university without a great library.” Ten years later, he and his wife Sue chaired the campaign which raised over eighteen million dollars to help make the Libraries’ expansion and renovation possible. The groundbreaking for the library, named the Paterno Library in their honor, took place in April 1997 and construction was completed in the fall of 2000.
Paterno Library is home to the Business, Education and Behavioral Sciences, Life Sciences, Social Sciences, and Special Collections libraries.
