Libraries and museums of Harvard University

Libraries and museums of Harvard University

The Library System Harvard University focuses on the Widener Library in Harvard Yard and comprises over 80 libraries that hold about 15 million volumes. According to the American Library Association, this makes it the largest academic library in the United States, and one of the largest in the world.

Cabot Library, Lamont Library, and Widener Library are three of the most popular libraries for students to use, with easy access and central locations. There are rare books, manuscripts and other special collections throughout Harvard's libraries; Houghton Library, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in the United States, and the Archive of the University of Harvard consist mainly of rare and unique materials. Collection oldest in the United States of maps, gazetteers, and atlases both old and new is stored in Pusey Library and open to the public. The largest collection of East Asian language material outside of East Asia is held in the Harvard-Yenching Library.

Harvard operates several arts, cultural, and scientific museums:

• Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, designed by Le Cor busier, is home to the University's film archive and the department of Visual and Environmental Studies.
 

• The Harvard Art Museums, including:
 

• The Arthur M. Sackler Museum, which includes ancient art, Asian, Islamic and later Indian
 

• The Busch-Reisinger Museum, formerly the Germanic Museum, covers the art of Central and Northern Europe.
 

• The Fogg Museum of Art, with galleries featuring history of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present. Particular strengths are in Italian early Renaissance, British per-Raphaelite, and 19th century French art
 

• The Harvard Museum of Natural History complex, including:
 

• The Harvard Mineralogical Museum
 

• The Her barium of Harvard University, which contains the famous Blaschka Glass Flowers exhibit
 

• The Museum of Comparative Zoology
 

• The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, specializing in the cultural history and civilizations of the Western Hemisphere
 

• The Semitic Museum