About the Mugar Memorial Library

Mugar Memorial Library is the main humanities and social sciences library at Boston University and is located at the heart of Boston University’s Charles River Campus.

Mugar Memorial Library opened in 1966 and since then, librarians at Mugar and its branches have continued to develop collections that support the research and instructional needs of the University community. The Mugar Library’s print collections broadly support the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In addition, the Library provides online access to 500 databases, 150,000 journals, and over a million ebooks.

Located within Mugar, the African Studies Library is one of the foremost collections of Africana in North America. The Music Library, located on the second floor of Mugar Library, includes collections of books, scores, current periodicals and recordings. The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, located on the fifth floor of Mugar Library, is a repository for contemporary public figures and is home to the University’s rare book and manuscript collections. Additionally, BU Libraries also has five branch libraries: Astronomy, Pardee Management Library, Pickering Educational Resources Library, Science & Engineering Library, and Stone Science Library.

Since 1962, Boston University has been a member of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), a prestigious organization comprised of approximately 125 leading research libraries in the United States. ARL’s mission is to advance the future of libraries within the framework of scholarly communication. Boston University is also a founding member of the Boston Library Consortium (BLC), a group of 18 research libraries in New England dedicated to sharing collections, building staff expertise, and jointly acquiring electronic resources.

Maps, directions and information about transportation and parking are available here.