Since it was established in 1823 as the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library Association, the Brooklyn Museum of Art has been collecting scholarly research materials to foster understanding of the Museum's object collections and the broader areas of art and cultural history. Today with over 250,000 volumes, the Libraries comprise the fifth largest art museum library collection in the nation. Paralleling the Museum's encyclopedic scope, this non-circulating Library collection is particularly strong in the art and cultural history of North and South America, Africa, Asia, Egypt, Islam and the Ancient Middle East. The fine arts are well represented with research material on painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, photography, decorative arts as well as costume and textiles.
Information is collected which documents artistic achievements and cultures from around the world.
The Art Reference Library covers art, anthropology and ethnology ranging from antiquity,with the exception of Egypt and the Classical World, to contemporary times. The Wilbour Library of Egyptology covers the cultural history, art and archaeology of Ancient Egypt from its Paleolithic beginnings up to the Islamic period with additional information on Greece, Rome and the Ancient Middle East. Special collections of the Libraries include 20,000 fashion and costume sketches created by leading designers from 1912 to 1950, over 50,000 documentary photographs, rare books, artists' books and letters. The Archives makes available the institutional records of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and its predecessors. The holdings include administrative and curatorial records documenting the Museum and its governance, its building, collections, exhibitions, staff and activities.