Through your Brown University Library, graduate students have access to Library experts, outstanding campus spaces, and physical and digital resources covering over 80 core academic areas and myriad interdisciplinary subjects. The Library’s physical collections are housed in five campus buildings as well as the nearby Library Collections Annex. In addition, the John Carter Brown Library — an independent research institution dedicated to study of the Americas prior to 1825 — is located on campus and open to Brown students.

Library experts, including the Academic Liaison Librarians assigned to each department, are available to help you take full advantage of the Library's incredible collections, formulate effective strategies for identifying and locating materials, and more. If your graduate program does not host a group introduction to Library services for your cohort, you can schedule a consultation with the library expert in your field of study when you begin your program at Brown. Consultations can be scheduled directly with library experts, and questions can be asked via chat or by email through rock@brown.edu (general) or hay@brown.edu (special collections).

The Library offers an array of workshops on scholarly skills, tools, and methods that are popular with graduate students and faculty. View the full calendar of workshops offered by experts throughout the Library.

Guides and videos with information about how to use the Library and conduct research are available online.

Brown University Library offers numerous opportunities for graduate students to expand their scholarly and professional skills through direct engagement with collections and programs, currently including the Interdisciplinary Opportunities in the Humanities and Social Sciences fellowship program and a proctorship with several Library departments, including Brown University Digital Publications, GeoData@SciLi, and Orwig Music Library. Employment opportunities for graduate students are also periodically available in a range of areas including specialized language cataloging, archival work, program development, data services, and digital projects.

BruKnow is Brown’s catalog search engine — your gateway to Brown’s collections of nearly 7 million volumes, including nearly 3 million ebooks, more than 250,000 ejournals, and over 500 research databases. (If connecting from off-campus, be sure to check the off-campus login options.) BruKnow provides the call number and stack location for physical materials as well as direct links to online content. BruKnow provides access to the majority of the Library’s collections, but some specialized resources must be accessed via the A-Z Databases list on the Library’s website.

The John Hay Library is home to Brown University’s remarkable collections of rare books, manuscripts, and archival material with more than 3 million items. Holdings range from Babylonian clay tablets and Egyptian papyri to current-day books, manuscripts, and ephemera. The collections include some 400,000 monographs, 1.5 million archival files and records, 500,000 pieces of sheet music, and 60,000 each of broadsides, photographs, and prints. The John Hay’s collecting policy is organized around seven broad areas of distinctive strength and three integrative themes in the sciences —  including American literature and popular culture, LGBTQ writers, speculative fiction, political and diplomatic history and propaganda, health and medicine, the history of mathematics, and military and society.  The recently established  Voices of Mass Incarceration in the United States collecting priority gathers and provides access to original material in all formats that document the lived experiences of incarcerated individuals in the U.S. as well as those affected by the American prison system. See our selective list of special collections.

The John Hay is also a leader in primary source pedagogy, and large numbers of Brown students and faculty engage with the John Hay Library as a site of interdisciplinary exploration and active teaching, learning, and research using special collections. Many graduate students conduct their dissertation research using the Hay’s special collections. Programs, exhibitions, and collection development at the Hay is continually transformed by and with Brown’s vibrant intellectual community.

The Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS), the University’s digital scholarship hub, provides expertise, support, and training on a variety of topics in digital scholarship such as data visualization, textual and quantitative analysis, data management, digital research project consulting and more. Graduate students also have opportunities to collaborate with CDS staff on faculty-driven digital projects and publications via proctorships or employment.

Doctoral Certificate in Digital Humanities

The Center for Digital Scholarship and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities are pleased to partner together to offer the Doctoral Certificate in Digital Humanities, which will provide students with a foundation in digital methods and skills for their research, as well as an understanding of the broader theoretical questions that digital approaches to scholarship offer. The certificate is aimed at Ph.D. students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, though Ph.D. students from all disciplines are welcome to apply. 

Instruction and Consultations

The Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) is here to help graduate students and scholars across the campus understand and use digital methodologies in research and scholarship. CDS staff teach workshops, help design class digital projects, support and teach digital humanities courses, and offer consulting services. The workshops and skills we teach are listed below. 

CDS offers workshops on data, tools, and methods. Each summer, we offer a two-week digital humanities workshop series. 

Consultations: Have a digital scholarship project you’d like help with? Wondering about how digital tools might complement other aspects of your research project? CDS staff are available to meet with you and discuss your ideas to help you get started in the field of digital scholarship.

Brown University Digital Publications

Brown University Digital Publications — a collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities — creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.

Facilities

State-of-the-art data visualization facilities are available at the Rockefeller Library’s Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL). The DSL enables scholars across disciplines to engage with research data using advanced visualization hardware and software, to examine and compare high-resolution digital content, and to experience audiovisual media in a setting unique on Brown’s campus. 

The Sidney E. Frank Digital Studio at the Rockefeller Library provides a unique and exciting intellectual hub for digitally enhanced scholarship at Brown. Infrastructure and staff in the Digital Studio facilitate both short-term and extended engagements with academic questions that benefit from the infusion of technology and new methodologies in research and learning. Open to all faculty and students, the Studio contains a soundproof audio/video recording suite, a 3D scanner, and more.

Brown students are able to borrow books from our Ivy Plus partners. In addition, both print books and journal articles (in pdf form) from several thousand research libraries worldwide are available through interlibrary loan. Learn more about borrowing from other institutions.

The Course Reserves portal is used to place text, audio, and video materials on reserve for classes. Anything placed on reserve will also be accessible to students in Canvas. Please see the staff in any of the libraries for assistance, contact the Library via chat, or email rock@brown.edu.  

Vincent J. Wernig Graduate Student Reading Room

The Vincent J. Wernig Graduate Student Reading Room is located on the 2nd floor of the Rockefeller Library, up the stairs to the right of the main entrance. It includes a large seminar room and kitchen. Graduate students can access the space by swiping their ID cards at the door.

Champlin Memorial Medical Library

Located within The Warren Alpert Medical School at 222 Richmond Street, the Champlin Memorial Library is open 24/7 to medical students. Though it contains no on-site physical collections, online access to the Library's extensive collection of electronic journals, textbooks, and databases is fully available with a Brown ID via Core Health Sciences Resources. Medical faculty and staff may use the Champlin Library while in the medical school building during business hours; after-hours access is restricted to medical students.

Reserving Spaces

The Library offers a variety of spaces for research, teaching, and study for groups and individuals. Graduate students can reserve group study rooms at the Rockefeller Library through libcal.brown.edu. 

Graduate TAs may also access a limited number of small study/collaboration rooms to conduct online sections. Registration is required through 25Live. 

Carrels and Lockers

To accommodate the use of materials in long-term projects, graduate and medical students can apply to reserve study carrels at the Rockefeller, Sciences, and Orwig Libraries by inquiring at the Rockefeller Library service desk. 

Lockers located in the stacks at the Rockefeller Library are available to all carrel-holding graduate and medical students. Combination lockers are also available in the Wernig Graduate Student Reading Room at the Rock. All lockers are issued at the circulation desk. Lockers can be renewed and kept for as long as the student is matriculated at Brown.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library

The John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, known as “the Rock,” is the primary teaching and research library for the humanities and social sciences. Book checkout, interlibrary loan, and help services are available on the entrance level (Level 1). On Level 2, graduate students have exclusive ID-swipe access to the Vincent J. Wernig Graduate Student Reading Room.

Sciences Library

The tallest building on campus at 14 stories, the Sciences Library, known as the "SciLi," holds print materials in medicine, psychology, neural science, biology, chemistry, earth, environmental, and planetary sciences, physics, engineering, computer science, and pure and applied mathematics. The Friedman Study Center, located on Level A, includes computer clusters and library services. 

The 11th floor is home to the GeoData@SciLi space, a consultation and workspace devoted to geospatial data and research that's part of the Center for Library Exploration and Research (CLEAR). GeoData@SciLi offers research consultations on finding, accessing, processing, and using geospatial, demographic, and socio-economic data; workshops; access to datasets purchased by the Library; computer terminals for accessing social sciences data resources; and expert support for finding and studying the Library’s collection of over 100,000 maps.

John Hay Library

The John Hay Library houses the Library’s Special Collections and Archives. The classic and grand Willis Reading Room is open to all for quiet study. The Gildor Family Special Collections reading room is open to all Brown community members as well as the public via appointment. Special collections materials can be requested online with an account in the John Hay’s request system. The John Hay is also available as a primary source laboratory for instructors and students; it hosts over 150 class sessions from nearly all Brown departments each year, and staff are available to teach sessions and to help graduate students learn about researching and teaching with primary sources.

Orwig Music Library

The Virginia Baldwin Orwig Music Library houses the main teaching and research collections in music and related areas such as dance and music-related forms of theater. Its collections include LPs, books, scores, periodicals, compact discs, and DVDs. Media materials (CDs, DVDs, LPs) circulate to all members of the Brown community, and the Music Library has playback equipment for a number of legacy formats including CD, DVD, LP, and Blu-Ray. Graduate students can borrow media materials for one week.

The Annmary Brown Memorial (currently closed to the public)

This unique building, completed in 1907, is a museum, mausoleum, and memorial. Designed by architect Norman Isham, its bronze doors feature symbolic representations of Art and Learning, signaling to visitors the many treasures to explore and the array of cultural arts programming throughout the year. On exhibit are paintings from the collection of Annmary Brown and her husband, General Rush Hawkins, and special collections items from the John Hay Library. 

Library Collections Annex

This high-density storage facility with a capacity of 1.5 million volumes is located approximately four miles from campus. Materials shelved at the Annex can be requested using BruKnow (the Library’s online catalog) for retrieval and use on campus. Journal articles from titles shelved at the Annex can be scanned and delivered electronically to your desktop.

John Carter Brown Library

The John Carter Brown Library, an independently administered and funded center for advanced research in history and the humanities, is located on the Main Green of Brown’s campus. The JCB is home to one of the world’s outstanding collections of printed books and other materials related to the early Americas. Its collection represents more than 65,000 rare books, maps, and manuscripts created in more than two hundred languages spanning more than three centuries. A Welcome and Access plan initiated in 2021 included the renovation of the historic building’s west entrance and a new programming plan. A digital platform for open access to the collections was launched in the spring of 2023, and the JCB is currently developing “2026 and Beyond” programming to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States and explore key topics related to it in the wider context of the Americas.

The JCB organizes and hosts events which graduate students in any field are welcome to attend. The JCB also offers a suite of fellowships for research support including the J.M. Stuart Fellowship (tenable for nine months) exclusively for Brown graduate students in the humanities or social sciences whose dissertation topic relates to the early history and culture of the Americas.

We encourage your feedback about any aspect of Library services, resources, and facilities. Feedback can be made through this anonymous form, which has an option for inputting your contact information, or you can email WelcomeToYourLibrary@brown.edu.