Quick Facts
The George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida at a Glance

The libraries of the University of Florida form the largest academic information resource system in the state of Florida and serve every college and center in the university, including the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) and the Health Science Center. UF’s libraries consist of seven libraries; six of which comprise the George A. Smathers Libraries. The Smathers Libraries actively collaborate with the Legal Information Center, which is a part of the Levin College of Law.

The Smathers Libraries include the following:

The Smathers Libraries have a large and diverse IT footprint, including 485 publicly accessible computers, numerous specialized scanners, 3D printers and other equipment, iPads are available for check-out.

Marston Science Library houses MADE@UF in the Collaboration Commons on the first floor. MADE@UF was created by the Libraries and Academic Technology with equipment, software and training for virtual reality and augmented reality applications. Library West houses the One Button Studio video production studio for students and faculty.

Library Deans

Judith C. Russell, Dean of Universities
Patrick J. Reakes, Senior Associate Dean for Scholarly Resources and Services
Emily McElroy, Fackler Director and Associate Dean of Research and Health Sciences
Valrie Minson, Associate Dean for Academic Support Services and Chair, Marston Science Library
Ben F. Walker, Associate Dean, Faculty Affairs and Access & Technical Services

Faculty and Staff

The library staff consists of more than 90 library faculty, 225 professional/technical/clerical staff, and 190 student assistants. Librarians at the University of Florida are tenure-track faculty. All have graduate degrees in Library Science or Information Studies, and/or a graduate degree in a relevant subject area. Some teach for-credit courses and they often make presentations that are incorporated into courses across campus. Library faculty serve the university community in the following roles:

  • General and specialized reference
  • Faculty and department liaisons, and outreach
  • Instruction in library-related classes, in courses and/or personalized one-on-one
  • Collection managers and curators
  • Subject specialists
  • Principle Investigators

Significant Collections

The Smathers Libraries have built a number of nationally significant research collections, mainly supporting graduate research programs. Among them are the following:

Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature, which is among the world’s finest collections of historical literature for children with over 120,000 volumes published in Great Britain and the United States from the mid-1600s through the present.

The Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica, which is the largest collection of its kind in the southeastern U.S. Its diversified holdings of uncommon research materials in English, Hebrew and other languages support scholarship in virtually every aspect of the Jewish experience. The Judaica Suite, inside the Grand Reading Room of Smathers Library,

Latin American and Caribbean Collectionwhich is among the largest and most distinguished collections of Latin American materials in the U.S. and has been described as the finest collection of Caribbeana in the world.

Map and Imagery Library, which is an extensive repository of maps, atlases, aerial photographs, and remote sensing imagery with particular collection strengths for the southeastern United States, Florida, Latin America and Africa south of the Sahara.

Popular Culture Collections, which includes the Belknap Collection for the Performing Arts, the Jim Liversidge Collection and the Suzy Covey Comic Book Collection.

P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, which is the state’s preeminent Floridiana collection and holds the largest North American collection of Spanish colonial documents about the southeastern United States and rich archives of prominent Florida politicians.

The libraries also have particularly strong holdings in architectural preservation and 18th-century American architecture, late 19th- and early-20th-century German state documents, national bibliographies, U.S. Census information, especially in electronic format, and other U.S. documents, the rural sociology of Florida and tropical and subtropical agriculture collections, and English and American literature.

For more information about individual libraries, collections or other library units, please see https://uflib.ufl.edu/about/org-structure/

Digital Collections

The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) hosts many outstanding digital collections, containing millions of pages, covering tens of thousands of subjects in rare books, manuscripts, global and generic maps, children’s literature, newspapers, theses and dissertations, data sets, photographs, oral histories, and more for permanent access and preservation, for a total of more than 1.125 million items, within 468 collections. Through UFDC, users have free and Open Access to full unique and rare materials held by the University of Florida and partner institutions. See more.

Exhibitions and Displays

Five exhibitions are held in the Special Collections gallery of Smathers Library annually and feature rare treasures from the Department of Special and Area Studies Collections. Receptions are held which often feature authors, artists and UF faculty as speakers. The Albert H. Nahmad Panama Canal Gallery displays items from the Libraries’ Panama Canal Museum Collection. The Smathers Lobby Gallery also displays items from the Department of Special and Area Studies Collections. Smaller exhibitions and displays are located in Library West, the Marston Science Library, the Health and Science Center Library, the Latin American and Caribbean Collection on the 3rd floor of Smathers Library, the Architecture and Fine Arts Library and the Education Library. Governor’s House in St. Augustine also has exhibitions.

Library Visitors

The Libraries have experienced than 5 million in-person visits annually (with the exception of 2020 and early 2021). The Libraries’ websites receive nearly 5.5 million views each year.

Public Accommodations

Student, faculty and researcher spaces include open areas, restricted-study graduate student areas, group study rooms and individual graduate student and faculty study carrels. The Libraries occupy over 475,000 square feet of usable space.

Marston Science Library has 26 group study rooms, Library West has 18, the Education Library has seven and the Health Science Center Library has three.

State University System (SUS) High Density Facility

In October of 2007, the Board of Governors approved a request to build a High Density Facility at the University of Florida to provide access to the shared research collection for the SUS libraries. The facility will house the Florida Academic Repository (FLARE), which currently contains 1.73 million volumes contributed by five academic libraries. FLARE is a statewide asset that is already serving patrons from public and private academic libraries in Florida from a temporary UF facility. The plan called for a high density “Harvard” model storage facility with a capacity of three million print volumes. The new facility will be built adjacent to the existing Smathers Libraries’ storage facility, Auxiliary Library Facility (ALF). The existing ALF building will be renovated and repurposed. It will serve as the processing space for placing materials into high density and retrieving them. It will also house the digitization, preservation and conservation operations currently located in the Smathers Libraries. These operations will continue to support the UF Libraries as well as the collections in the High Density Facility. Some space will be reserved for UF Archives and Special Collections not suitable for the High Density area. Access to materials will be available by appointment in an onsite reading room, but the primary means of access will be through unmediated borrowing by the SUS and interlibrary loan.