Collection Strengths

The New Brunswick Libraries collections are distributed among libraries and spaces across the New Brunswick/Piscataway campuses. 

The Archibald S. Alexander Library (Alexander), on the College Avenue Campus, is the oldest and largest of the Rutgers University Libraries. Most books and print journals for the humanities and social sciences are housed here. Alexander Library also has a strong collection in government publications for the United States, New Jersey, and international organizations, with smaller collections from foreign countries, other states, and local governments.

The East Asian Library is located on the second floor in the south wing of Alexander Library. The collection includes publications in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean vernaculars.

The basement level of the Alexander Library is the home of Special Collections and University Archives where materials that focus on New Jersey and Rutgers, as well as rare books and unique manuscripts, are collected.

The Art Library (Art) is located in Voorhees Hall on the College Avenue Campus.  It houses the main collection for the visual arts including large format heavily-illustrated volumes and current subscriptions to art journals.

The James Dickson Carr Library (Carr), known as the Kilmer Area Library until it was renamed in 2017, is located on the Livingston Campus. Carr's primary collections support the business program and career studies.

The Stephen and Lucy Chang Science Library (Chang) is located in Foran Hall on the Cook Campus. The Chang library houses a portion of the biological and environmental sciences collections including materials related to agriculture.

The Mabel Smith Douglass Library (Douglass), on the Douglass Campus, has a primary collection focus on women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. New Brunswick's media collection is also housed at Douglass.

The Performing Arts Library is a comprehensive research facility for music, housing books, periodicals, scores, microfilm, and sound recordings. The materials are housed in two areas of Douglass Library: the print collection on the ravine level, and the recordings in the Media Center.

The Library of Science and Medicine (LSM), on the Busch Campus, is home to most science research collections in New Brunswick Libraries. The exceptions are those in the Math/Physics Library and the Chang Library. LSM also houses scientific and technical government documents from all levels of government. It has been a depository for United States patents and trademarks since 1989.

The Mathematical Sciences and Physics Library (Math/Physics) is located in Hill Center on the Busch Campus. It holds the primary collection of materials in astronomy, computer science, mathematics, physics, and statistics.

The Annex is a remote storage facility, closed to the public and located on the Busch Campus. Opened in 1982, the three-story construction is designed to house approximately one-half million volumes in a closed stacks temperature-controlled environment. Infrequently used and fragile periodicals, monographs, government documents, microforms, and archival materials are stored at the Annex.

The James B. Carey Library, located on the Cook Campus, houses collections that focus on labor studies and employment relations. Although affiliated with New Brunswick Libraries, it is administratively part of Rutgers' School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR).

Two smaller research libraries, not part of Rutgers but affiliated and accessible to our users, are the Gardner A. Sage Library of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary and the Library of the American Hungarian Foundation. Both libraries are located in New Brunswick. The Sage Library, on Seminary Place, specializes in Christian theology, while the Hungarian library, on Somerset Street, has one of the largest collections in the United States for Hungarian American history.

New Brunswick Libraries digital collections are shared across all the Rutgers campuses through QuickSearch and hundreds of more specialized databases. They consist of a large array of scholarly journals, newspapers, ebooks, government publications, streaming media, and primary source collections in all subjects.