The Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, situated in the center of the University of Michigan's Central Campus, is the largest of 20 libraries in the University Library System. The Graduate Library houses the University of Michigan's primary research collection for the humanities and social sciences.

The Graduate Library is comprised of two separate but connected buildings, built 50 years apart. The original (north) building, which faces the Diag, was dedicated on January 7, 1920. The newer (south) building - shown at right - was completed in 1970, at which time the library was named for Harlan Hatcher, the ninth president of the University. [Learn more about Presidents of the University].

The Graduate library houses a staff of approximately 95 full-time employees; contains over 227,035 square feet of usable space; circulates over half a million books a year; and responds to over 50,000 reference requests a year.

The Graduate Library collection numbers over 3.5 million volumes including 10,000 journals and periodical subscriptions written in several hundred languages. In addition, library patrons have access to over 20,000 online journals and newspapers and over 500 licensed online databases.

The Graduate Library collection supports scholarship campus wide and is particularly strong in the following areas: English and French local history; papyrology; history and culture of Germany, the Netherlands, and Central Europe; English literature; classical archaeology; the history of science; social and political movements; area studies including Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Near East, and Slavic countries; U.S. and foreign government publications; maps; manuscripts and special collections; and reference and bibliographic sources.

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