Joe and Sue Paterno
Begin your tour with Paterno Library.
Fred Lewis Pattee
Begin your tour with Pattee Library.


University Libraries
History
In 1859, Penn State's first library collection consisted of about 1,500 volumes in agriculture and the sciences and was housed in Old Main, along with most other college facilities. The nineteenth-century library was considered an auxiliary to study and by 1888 was open six hours a day. By the turn of the century, the library had grown to nearly 20,000 volumes. The overcrowding finally was relieved by construction of the Carnegie Library, a gift of steel magnate and college trustee Andrew Carnegie.

The library moved to what is now the Carnegie Building in 1904. The 50,000-volume-capacity building had the beginnings of some special collections, including government documents and the Penn State Room. Departmental libraries in a number of the sciences also had been established by this time, and some continue today as our branch libraries. The collection outgrew the building, which by 1940 contained three times as many volumes as the number for which the building was designed, and moved into the new Pattee Library.

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August 30, 2000 amb
U.Ed. LIB 01-017