University Libraries

The heart of our academic community

Four thousand-year-old Mesopotamian tablets. Terabytes of images and text. Twenty-five thousand reference questions fielded each year. One million visitors. And one mission: to support the learning and research goals of Northwestern and scholars the world over.

Through physical spaces, materials, technologies, and staff, University Libraries provide essential tools for teaching and research, enables groundbreaking discoveries, and offers gathering places for our community.

When you support University Libraries at any level, you help us to meet the evolving needs of students, faculty, and the Northwestern community.

Gifts to the Libraries will help us reach a new level of distinction by investing in these priorities:

• Transforming the iconic Deering Library with significant upgrades that will bring this beloved, 80-year-old building into the 21st century
• Strengthening collections by augmenting our holdings in important and emerging academic fields and making rare materials more accessible through digitization
• Sustaining Northwestern University Press as a leading publisher of poetry, theater, philosophy, and translations of foreign literature
• Realizing our full potential as a student, faculty, and community resource by increasing staff, services, and programs such as lectures and exhibitions

Direct your gift to an individual library or collection, or give to the University Libraries Annual Fund, which supports the acquisitions that build the research strength of the Libraries' collections and bolster Northwestern’s academic programs.

Supporters who make leadership gifts of $1,000 or more annually to University Libraries are recognized with membership in the Deering Society.