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| Country | Canada |
|---|---|
| Type | Academic library |
| Established | 1892 |
| Location | Toronto, Ontario |
| Branches | 33 |
| Collection | |
| Items collected | Books, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, databases, maps, drawings and manuscripts |
| Size | 11 million bound volumes, 5.5 million microform volumes |
| Other information | |
| Budget | Close to C$70,000,000 (annual) |
| Staff | 670 (FTE) |
| Website | library.utoronto.ca |
The University of Toronto Libraries system comprises over 30 libraries that hold more than 11 million bound volumes and 5.5 million items in microform. It ranks among the top five academic libraries in North America. [1]
The most prominent library in the system is Robarts Library, which contains the university's main collection for humanities and social sciences, as well as the central library administrative offices. The adjacent Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library houses Canada's largest public repository of rare books and manuscripts. The Gerstein Science Information Centre is the main library for sciences and health sciences.
Like the university itself, the libraries operate under a relatively decentralized system of governance. The central libraries, including Robarts, Fisher and Gerstein, account for the bulk of the collections with about 7.7 million bound volumes, and are headed by the chief librarian who reports to the university provost. The Library Council, composed of senior staff and library committee chairs, advises the chief librarian on library policy. With more than 1 million volumes, many specialty libraries are operated by the academic faculties, departments and research centres. As the University of Toronto is a collegiate university, its colleges also maintain their own libraries that together comprise more than 1.3 million bound volumes.[2]
Following the example of other research universities, in 2007 the university opened an off-campus, high-density storage and preservation facility in Downsview, designed to store infrequently-accessed books that may be transported to campus as they are requested.
Since 2005, the university has been a major contributor to the Open Content Alliance, an initiative by the Internet Archive to create a permanent public archive of digitized texts.[3]
The following are the University of Toronto's centrally administrated libraries, and libraries of various faculties, departments, centres and colleges.
  | Building an Online Library, One Volume at a Time - Building an Online Library, One Volume at a Time - WSJ.com |
| | University of Toronto Libraries - University of Toronto Libraries Portal |
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