About the UC Berkeley Library

people work on laptops in the sunny north reading room
Students get a jump on the fall semester in the North Reading Room of Doe Library. (Photo by Jami Smith/UC Berkeley Library)


Mission

We help people find, evaluate, use, and create knowledge to better the world.

Vision

We will be a leader and partner in creating and implementing ideas and services that advance research, teaching, and learning.

The Library

Considered the crown jewel of higher education in California, UC Berkeley relies on the Library every day to support its world-class teaching and its cutting-edge research, and to enrich the experience of the thousands of students who have made the university their academic home. With an amazing array of locations, the UC Berkeley Library has something for everyone, from the trove of primary documents chronicling the West at Bancroft, to the collaborative and innovative spaces at Moffitt, to the vast and unparalleled collections at Doe — a beacon of information standing in the shadow of the iconic Campanile. Together, these libraries help sustain UC Berkeley as a leading producer of knowledge, and support an institution that’s often considered one of the best universities in the world.

The Library’s collections

The Library holds well over 14 million volumes in its world-renowned collections. Materials include paintings, lithographs, papyri, audio and video recordings, and ephemera such as leaflets from the Free Speech Movement, a note from Helen Keller to Mark Twain in honor of his 70th birthday, and vintage costumes worn by Berkeley’s beloved mascot, Oski.

By the numbers FY 2023-24

  • 14,659,518 volumes in the Library’s collections
  • 641 Work+Learn student employees
  • 400-plus languages represented in the collections
  • 1,307,918 visits to Moffitt Library
  • 24,196 participants in Library instruction
  • 1,758,871 images scanned as part of the Library’s digitization efforts

Library locations

You can’t travel far on UC Berkeley’s idyllic campus without running across one of its many libraries.

  1. Art History + Classics
  2. Bancroft
  3. Bioscience, Natural Resources + Public Health
  4. Business
  5. Chemistry, Astronomy + Physics
  6. Doe
  7. Earth Sciences + Map
  8. East Asian
  9. Engineering
  10. Environmental Design
  11. Graduate Services
  12. Main (Gardner) Stacks
  13. Mathematics Statistics
  14. Moffitt
  15. Morrison
  16. Music
  17. Newspapers + Microforms
  18. NRLF
  19. Social Research
  20. South + Southeast Asia