Our Mission
The University Library is a teaching organization that collaborates with faculty to prepare students for life-long learning as informed global citizens.
Welcome to the Washington and Lee University Library. The University Library supports Washington and Lee’s central mission of teaching, learning, and research in the liberal arts by providing a wide range of materials in all formats for use in the classroom, in student learning, in faculty research and preparation for teaching, and by offering a highly skilled staff to assist faculty, students, and other users in their knowledge inquiries. In addition to more than 650,000 volumes housed onsite, students and faculty both on and off campus have 24-hour access to the library’s web site and more than a million electronic resources. Our participation in a strong resource-sharing system allows us to obtain needed materials from other libraries all over the nation.
Our two dozen library faculty and staff support teaching, learning, and research for members of the W&L community. Please reach out to us via email (library@wlu.edu), or find a specific faculty or staff member on our directory. In addition to providing traditional library reference and instruction services, the University Library is the home of the Digital Culture and Information (DCI) undergraduate minor degree program. Courses in DCI allow students to deeply explore how the digital age impacts knowledge and society.
The University Library is truly without walls and, when it comes to providing information, is increasingly free of time constraints as well. The University Library’s two buildings, the James Graham Leyburn Library and the Robert Lee Telford Science Library, are open 24 hours daily when classes are in session, provide wireless Internet access throughout, and serve as the university’s primary venue for study, research, and work with multimedia resources. The University Library Special Collections and Archives, located in Leyburn Library, includes rare books and manuscripts and the university archives, with a collection emphasis on the history of the university and Rockbridge County, and the Shenandoah Valley. The Houston H. Harte Center for Teaching and Learning is also located in Leyburn Library. The separately administered Wilbur C. Hall Law Library serves the Law School.