Library Resources

The entire ninth floor of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library is devoted to art, architecture, and photography. Special collections include the East Asian Collection and Near East Collection on the 21^st floor and the East Asian Reference Collection on the 22^nd floor. The Library’s art holdings are strong, comprising over 80,000 volumes. The libraries at Amherst College, Mount Holyoke, and especially Smith complement the University’s holdings, and delivery of books not available at the University is expedited through Five College Delivery. Graduate students have access to these libraries, as well as other major art libraries in New England, such as the Clark Art Institute Library in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Since the University is part of a large Boston-based consortium of Massachusetts schools, students have ready access through interlibrary loan to great numbers of books in addition to the almost six million titles on the Amherst campus and the millions more accessible electronically (https://www.library.umass.edu/).  The University Interlibrary Loan Service obtains materials very quickly from sources all over the country, and graduate students are expected to make use of it each semester as they research their seminar papers.