in
Ann Arbor, Michigan at
Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore The first colleges in the United States were largely intended to train clergy members. The libraries associated with these institutions largely consisted of donated books on the subjects of theology and the classics. In 1766,
Harvard University had the most volumes held followed by
Yale University, which had 4,000 volumes. Access to these libraries was restricted to faculty members and a few students: the only staff was a part-time faculty member or the president of the college. The priority of the library was to protect the books, not to allow patrons to use them. In 1849, Yale was open 30 hours a week, the
University of Virginia was open nine hours a week,
Columbia University four, and
Bowdoin College only three. Students instead created
literary societies and assessed entrance fees for building a small collection of usable volumes, often over what the university library held. In 1904, the
Bibliographical Society of America was founded to foster the study of books and manuscripts. Academic librarians were the majority of members. Academic libraries today vary regarding the extent to which they accommodate those not affiliated with their parent universities. Some offer reading and borrowing privileges to members of the public on payment of an annual fee; such fees can vary greatly. The benefits usually do not extend to such services as computer usage other than to search the catalog or Internet access. Alumni and students of cooperating local universities may be given discounts or other considerations when arranging for borrowing privileges. On the other hand, some universities' libraries are restricted to students, faculty, and staff. Even in this case, they may make it possible for others to borrow materials through
interlibrary loan programs. Libraries of
land-grant universities generally are more accessible to the public. In some cases, they are official government document repositories and are required to be open to the public. Still, public members are generally charged fees for borrowing privileges and usually are not allowed to access everything they would be able to as students.
Harvard Library at
Harvard University, a private
Ivy League university in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the largest academic library in the world with over 20 million volumes, 400 million manuscripts, 10 million photographs, and one million maps.
Canada In Canada, academic libraries have been more recently developed than in other nations. The first academic library in Canada, opened in 1789, was in
Windsor, Nova Scotia, at the University of King's College. Academic libraries were significantly small during the 19th century and up until the 1950s, when Canadian academic libraries began to grow steadily as a result of greater importance being placed on education and research. As a result of this growth and the Ontario New Universities Library Project that occurred during the early 1960s, five new universities were established in
Ontario that all included fully cataloged collections. The total number of college and university libraries increased from 31 in 1959–1960 to 105 in 1969–1970. Following the growth of academic libraries in Canada during the 1960s, there was a brief period of sedation, which directly resulted from some significant budgetary issues. These academic libraries were faced with cost issues relating to the recently developed service of
interlibrary lending and the high costs of periodicals on acquisition budgets, which affected overall acquisition budgeting and ultimately public collections. Academic libraries within Canada might not have flourished or continued to be strengthened without the help of outside organizations. The
Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) was established in 1967 to promote unity among Canadian academic libraries. The Ontario College and University Library Association (OCULA) is attached to the
Ontario Library Association (OLA) and is concerned with representing academic librarians regarding issues shared in the academic library setting.
Europe in
Helsinki Among the earliest academic libraries in
Europe are
Bodleian Library at the
University of Oxford (founded in 1602), the
Library of Trinity College Dublin (founded in 1592), and
Vilnius University Library in
Lithuania (founded in 1570). Unlike U.S. academic libraries, many academic libraries in Europe do not have open stacks like American academic libraries do, which can also apply to an institution's general collections. Although some European academic libraries utilize a classification system similar to or based upon the
Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) used in the U.S., European academic libraries sometimes develop their own systems to organize their collections. == Modern academic libraries ==