The Colby libraries provide attractive surroundings for study and research at three campus locations. Miller Library, the most often photographed building with the clock tower in the center of campus, houses the humanities and social science collections, the College archives, Special Collections, and the Library's administrative and technical staff. A branch library for art and music is in the Bixler Art and Music Center and features a state-of-the-art listening center and a rapidly growing slide collection. The Allyn-Smith Science Library, located in the F.W. Olin Science Center, includes study spaces with network access. The Colby libraries are open from early morning until late at night throughout the academic year and during daytime hours in the summer. Some study areas and a computer cluster are open 24 hours a day.

An open-stack system allows easy access to a collection of more than 778,000 items, and the on-line catalog and many of the Library's electronic indexes and Internet files are available on library workstations and computers campus-wide. Electronic materials on CD-ROM and those received across the Internet are an exciting and rapidly expanding element of the Library collections. The collection strongly supports all curriculum areas and contains more than 2,700 currently received periodicals, many long runs of retrospective periodicals of historical and scholarly value, and daily newspapers from this country and abroad. Miller Library is a depository for U.S. and Maine state documents and subscribes to the United Nations depository collection on microfiche.

An active consortium with Bates and Bowdoin has resulted in mutual on-line access to our catalogs and to rapid turnaround time on lending of materials among the three institutions. Reference librarians and interlibrary loan staff help researchers identify and obtain resources beyond those in the CBB collections.

Employees and members of their families are encouraged to use the Colby libraries. The Colby Card may be used to transact all library business, once the bar-code has been actived. To activate the bar-code, please contact the circulation desk of Miller Library.

Miller Library is generally open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. and from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m., 7 days a week. Some study rooms and computer areas are open 24 hours per day. Library operating hours during vacation periods vary and will generally be posted at least one week before the vacation period begins.

Faculty and staff may keep books for one calendar year unless they are recalled. All books are subject to recall after two weeks if a request is made at the circulation desk. Back issues of periodicals may be borrowed for one week and current issues overnight. All materials may be renewed.

Reference librarians are available during most of the hours that the Library is open in order to provide personal assistance to Library users.

Staff can arrange to borrow materials from other libraries through the interlibrary loan service by applying at the reference desk. The Library will absorb the cost of postage and photocopying up to a maximum of $15.00 per item to the limit of the funds allocated for this purpose.

For detailed information about Colby's library collections and services, browse the Library's pages on the Colby Library Web site.

Special Collections

Special collections of first editions and manuscripts in Miller Library have achieved international recognition. The Edwin Arlington Robinson Memorial Room, named for the famous Pulitzer Prize-winning Maine poet, contains his books, manuscripts, letters, and memorabilia. The Thomas Hardy Collection is one of the most extensive in the country. Other authors represented in the Robinson Room include A.E. Housman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kenneth Roberts, Henry James, Willa Cather, John Masefield, William Dean Howells, and Thomas Mann.

The John and Catherine Healy Memorial Room contains the James Augustine Healy Collection of Modern Irish Literature, with numerous inscribed copies, manuscripts, and holograph letters of William Butler Yeats, Sean O'Casey, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, and many others. The Healy Collection has 7,000 primary and critical sources representing the Irish Literary Renaissance, 1880-1940.

The Alfred King Chapman Room houses the College archives, which hold more than 4,000 manuscript files pertaining to Colby alumni, faculty, and staff dating from 1813 to the present. Also included is an extensive collection of books by Colby graduates and faculty.