page_title: University of Oklahoma
section_title: Museums and libraries
hierarchical_section_title: University of Oklahoma / Museums and libraries
caption_attribution_description: Picture of Fred Jones Museum of Art in Norman, OK
context_page_description: The University of Oklahoma is a public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two became the state of Oklahoma. In Fall 2018 the university had 31,702 students enrolled, most at its main campus in Norman. Employing nearly 3,000 faculty members, the school offers 152 baccalaureate programs, 160 master's programs, 75 doctorate programs, and 20 majors at the first professional level.
  The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". According to the National Science Foundation, OU spent $283 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 82nd in the nation. Its Norman campus has two prominent museums, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, specializing in French Impressionism and Native American artwork, and the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, specializing in the natural history of Oklahoma.
  The university has won multiple national championships in multiple sports, including seven football national championships and two NCAA Division I baseball championships.
context_section_description: The university has two prominent museums, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art and the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.
  The Museum of Art was founded in 1936 and originally headed by Oscar Jacobson, the director of the School of Art at the time. The museum opened with over 2,500 items on display and was originally located on campus in Jacobson Hall. Mr. and Mrs. Fred Jones of Oklahoma City donated money for a permanent building in 1971 and the building was named in honor of their son who died in a plane crash during his senior year at the University of Oklahoma. Since then, the museum has acquired many renowned works of Native American art and, in 2000, received the Weitzenhoffer Collection of French Impressionism which includes works by Degas, Gauguin, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, and Vuillard. As of 2011 the museum has over 65,000 square feet (6,000 m²) filled with over 8,000 items from a wide array of time periods and movements. In 2005, the museum expanded with the opening of the new Lester Wing designed by contemporary architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen. The architectural style of the new addition deviates from the Collegiate Gothic style of the university, but Jacobsen felt this was necessary given the contemporary works of art the wing would house.
  The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, located south of the main campus and directly southwest of the law building, specializes in the history of the people and animals that have inhabited Oklahoma over the last 300 million years. Since its founding in 1899, the museum has acquired over 5 million objects. In 2000, a new building was opened to house the ever-expanding museum. The new building offered nearly 200,000 square feet (18,600 m²) of space to display the many exhibits the museum has to offer.
  The University of Oklahoma Library system has its headquarters in Bizzell Memorial Library. The largest research library in Oklahoma, it contains over 4.7 million volumes and is ranked 27th out of 113 research libraries in North America in volumes held. It contains more than 1.6 million photographs, subscriptions to over 31,000 periodicals, over 1.5 million maps, government documents dating back to 1893, and over 50 incunabula. It has eight locations on campus. The primary library is Bizzell Memorial Library, located in the middle of the main campus. Other notable campus libraries include the Architecture Library, the Engineering Library, the Fine Arts Library, the Physics and Astronomy Library, and the Geology Library. The OU library system contains many unique collections such as the History of Science Collections (which houses over 94,000 volumes related to the history of science, including hand-noted works by Galileo Galilei), the Bizzell Bible Collection, and the Western History Collection.
  The School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS), the only American Library Association-accredited program in Oklahoma, offers a graduate degree (Master of Library and Information Studies) and an undergraduate degree (Bachelor of Arts in Information Studies). The impact of OU and SLIS on the history of libraries in Oklahoma is shown in the recent list of 100 Oklahoma Library Legends as produced by the Oklahoma Library Association. Two current faculty, one faculty emeriti, and numerous others associated with either the OU libraries or SLIS account for nearly 10% of the list's members.
caption: Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art on the University of Oklahoma campus has a different architectural style than the rest of the campus.
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