page_title: University of Pennsylvania
section_title: Libraries
hierarchical_section_title: University of Pennsylvania / Campus / Libraries
context_page_description: The University of Pennsylvania is a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. The University claims a founding date of 1740 and is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered prior to the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin, Penn's founder and first president, advocated an educational program that trained leaders in commerce, government, and public service, similar to a modern liberal arts curriculum.
  Penn has four undergraduate schools as well as twelve graduate and professional schools. Among its graduate and professional schools are the first school of medicine in North America and the first collegiate business school. Penn is also home to the first "student union" building and organization, the first double-decker college football stadium, and Morris Arboretum, the official arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In 2019, the university had an endowment of $14.65 billion, the sixth-largest endowment of all colleges in the United States, as well as a research budget of $1.02 billion. The university's athletics program, the Quakers, fields varsity teams in 33 sports as a member of the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference.
context_section_description: Penn's library began in 1750 with a donation of books from cartographer Lewis Evans. Twelve years later, then-provost William Smith sailed to England to raise additional funds to increase the collection size. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Libraries' earliest donors and, as a Trustee, saw to it that funds were allocated for the purchase of texts from London, many of which are still part of the collection, more than 250 years later. It has grown into a system of 15 libraries (13 are on the contiguous campus) with 400 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees and a total operating budget of more than $48 million. The library system has 6.19 million book and serial volumes as well as 4.23 million microform items and 1.11 million e-books. It subscribes to over 68,000 print serials and e-journals.
  Penn's libraries, with associated school or subject area: Annenberg (School of Communications), located in the Annenberg School; Biddle (Law), located in the Law School; Biomedical, located adjacent to the Robert Wood Johnson Pavilion of the Medical School; Chemistry, located in the 1973 Wing of the Chemistry Building; Dental Medicine; Engineering, located on the second floor of the Towne Building in the Engineering School; Fine Arts, located within the Fisher Fine Arts Library, designed by Frank Furness to be first library in nation to separate the low ceilings of the library stack, where the books were stored, from forty foot plus high ceilinged rooms, where the books were read and studied (see https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hWOH42D3i1U and also see Applications for Historical Landmark Status- http://uchs.net/HistoricDistricts/furness.html Accessed July 20, 2007.); Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, located at 420 Walnut Street, near Independence Hall and Washington Square; Lea Library, located within the Van Pelt Library; Lippincott (Wharton School), located on the second floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center; Math/Physics/Astronomy, located on the third floor of David Rittenhouse Laboratory; Museum (Archaeology); Rare Books and Manuscripts; Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center (Humanities and Social Sciences) – location of Weigle Information Commons; Veterinary Medicine, located in Penn Campus and New Bolton Center; and High Density Storage.
  The Penn Libraries are strong in Area Studies, with bibliographers for Africa, East Asia, Judaica, Latin America, Middle East, Russia, and Slavic and South Asia. As a result, the Penn Libraries have extensive collections in several hundred languages.
caption: Fisher Fine Arts Library, also referred to as the Furness Library or simply the Fine Arts Library
exif: {}