page_title: Sterling Memorial Library
section_title: Catalog
hierarchical_section_title: Sterling Memorial Library / Collections / Catalog
caption_attribution_description: Card catalog at the Sterling Memorial Library
context_page_description: Sterling Memorial Library is the main library building of the Yale University Library system in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Opened in 1931, the library was designed by James Gamble Rogers as the centerpiece of Yale's Gothic Revival campus. The library's tower has sixteen levels of bookstacks containing over 4 million volumes. Several special collections—including the university's Manuscripts & Archives—are also housed in the building. It connects via tunnel to the underground Bass Library, which holds an additional 150,000 volumes.
  The library is named for John W. Sterling, a lawyer representing Standard Oil, whose huge bequest to Yale required that an "enduring, useful and architecturally beautiful edifice" be built. Sterling Library is elaborately ornamented, featuring extensive sculpture and painting as well as hundreds of panes of stained glass created by G. Owen Bonawit. In addition to the book tower, Rogers' design featured five large reading rooms and two courtyards, one of which is now a music library.
  While the library's nave and main reading rooms can be visited on guided tours, its collections are restricted to cardholders.
context_section_description: The large majority of materials in Sterling are housed in the bookstacks, which are contained in the building's tower. The bookstacks use two classification systems: the Yale Library system and the Library of Congress system. Adopted in the 1890s, the non-standard Yale system became cumbersome and inefficient for cataloging. Though replaced in 1970 by the Library of Congress system, many of the 5.7 million volumes held by the library at that time remain filed in the Yale system. The card catalogs in the nave once contained as many as 9.5 million cards, sorted in 8,700 trays.
caption: Card catalogs stood in echelons in the nave in this 2010 image. A computer catalognow serves that information, and, since 2014, tables and chairs for student use fill that space.[42]
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