Video Tour of Rush Rhees Library

Welcome to the Rush Rhees Library
the largest of the River Campus Libraries
Dedicated in 1930, the building
is done in Greek Revival style
On this tour, we will show how the library fits in to
the undergraduates' lives
We're now standing in the Frelinger Lobby
Note the display cases, showcasing faculty publications
The library collections and services are the cornerstone of
research and scholarship at the university
The library spaces, though, belong to the students
This is the Welles-Brown Room, one of the
students' favorite study spaces
Straight ahead is the reference area
students can print out articles, find books they need,
and ask questions through our Ask a Library chat service
Librarians at the Reference Desk help students with research questions
Reference staff is available seven days a week during the academic year
To the right of the reference computers, you'll find the
Hawkins-Carlson Room.
This newly renovated space is used for lectures and receptions
and is also a popular study room
Near the Towers Stack entrance is the Circulation Desk
where you can check out books and journals,
request to reserve books, or make a request for materials not found on the shelf.
Nearby are the Popular Reading and New Books collections
The staircase takes you to the Periodical Reading Room
This room is usually packed with students studying and reading quietly.
In fact, the students will give you
The Look if you talk too loudly
When the weather is nice, you can step on out to the balcony
and relax in an adirondack chair
Across the lobby with this large statue of Industry and Athena
is the Great Hall, another good study spot
Stairs lead up to offices, the Robbins Library and the History Department
The Business and Government Information Library which opened in 2006
has business resources and federal documents
The Center also has a huge collection of microforms
and machines for viewing or creating PDF files from microfilm
The business collection has corporate financial data back to
the 1920s with thousands of federal documents published by
the U.S. government that covers everything from NASA to polio vaccines
If you step into the doorway marked Administration and turn to the right
you'll see the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
The Rare Books and Special Collections Library contains
more than 100,000 rare books and
over 350 manuscript collections
The oldest printed book in the collection is the
Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas
printed in Germany in 1472
On the right side of the entrance are Special Collections Exhibit Cases
The library installs more than a dozen exhibits each year
displaying materials from the collections
To the left of the entrance is the Hyam Plutzik Library of Contemporary Writing
where Creative Writing classes are held
The Seward Room is lined with exhibition cases in rows of
shelves, containing law books which William Henry Seward owned
Mr. Seward's papers include a number of letters from Abraham Lincoln
Students can use the collections from the Kominsky Reading Room
with its eight large study tables
Student internships including primary-source documents
including the Frederick Douglass Letters
are available each year in the Rare Books and Special Collections Library
As you head down the hall towards the elevator
check out the portrait library of famous Rochesterians
Take the elevator to the fourth floor to visit the
Robbins Library
The Robbins Library has one of the best collections in the world
for Middle English Literature and the Middle Ages in general
Housed in room 416 of Rush Rhees, it also includes
the Koller-Collins Center for English Studies
The Robbins Library has books on medieval literature, history and culture
especially of chivalry and the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood
It also has many books on witchcraft
Russell Hope-Robbins, a widely published medievalist
and author of the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology
donated his library to the University
The Robbins Library and Koller-Collins Center
is also the center of medival activities on campus
Conferences and talks on medieval and literary topics
including the lectures sponsored by the
Undergraduate Midieval Society are held in the Robbins Library
The Robbins Library has several important websites devoted to
Middle English literature and folklore
The Camelot Project provides information on the many legends of
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
Scholars from universities throughout the world have
contributed to the Camelot Project
Undergraduate students also contribute to the project
through research internships
Now lets take the elevator down to the Ground Floor
The Art/Music Library is located on the Ground Floor of
Rush Rhees Library beyond the gallery space
The Art/Music LIbrary has musical scores and CDs and
books and journals on photography, architecture,
painting and visual studies. There are tables and carrels
for individual and group study, as well as
comfortable chairs and for-public computers
Further down the hall you'll see the Multimedia Center
They have a student-founded collection of over 3000 DVDs which
you can browse and borrow for 4 days
Now we come to the Information Technology Center
with plenty of computers for students
The Upstairs gallery is popular for group study
Next we climb the staircase to the new Gleason Library
Opened in Fall 2007, the Gleason Library combines
group study spaces with chairs for solo reading,
a projection room for videos, and lots of natural light
Gleason acts as a third space for students, apart
from their dormitories and the classroom
This concludes our tour of the library
We hope you'll return soon