U. Grant Miller Library is the academic library for Washington & Jefferson College, located in Washington, Pennsylvania. With its origins tracing back to a donation from Benjamin Franklin in 1789, the collection currently hold 210,000 volumes. The Archives and Special Collections contain significant holdings of historical papers dating to the College's founding. The Walker Room contains the personal library of prominent industrialist John Walker, complete with all of his library's fixtures and furniture, installed exactly how it had been during Walker's life.
History
In 1789, a £50 gift from Benjamin Franklin formed the nucleus of the library at Washington College. The library has identified five books in the collection from this original purchase. After the unification of Washington College and Jefferson College, the combined library was located in Thompson Memorial Hall and moved to the current building in 1965. The first unified library on campus was the Thompson Library, which is currently known as Thompson Hall. The modern-day Miller Library collection has an open collection of 210,000 volumes, 500 periodical titles, over 17,000 Electronic journals, 9,500 of which are full text and integrated into the electronic library catalog. The audio collection has 4,000 LP records and 300 CDs. In the mid-1850s, the Washington College YMCA branch held 300 volumes in its library collection.
Archives and special collections
When Pittsburgh iron and steel industrialist John Walker died in 1932, the Walker family donated his private library to the College. His entire library was installed in the library exactly as it had been—including an extensive collection of books, bookcases, pictures, furniture, chandeliers, and stained-glass lamps. It had been originally installed in the Thompson Library, but moved to its current location in 1965. The Patterson Collection includes a broad array of approximately 500 old and rare books dating from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. This circulating collection was donated in 1929 by the estate of Thomas Hamilton Hoge Patterson of Philadelphia, a real estate developer during the early 20th century and the son of Joseph Patterson, founder of the Western Theological Seminary. The library maintains the Archives & Special Collections Library, a repository for primary documents relating to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century U.S. history, with a special emphasis on Southwestern Pennsylvania and the Underground Railroad and the Whiskey Rebellion. The Learned T. Bulman '48 Historic Archives & Museum holds rare books, manuscripts, and archival materials relating to the college's history. It was named for a W&J alum in honor of a $1 million gift. With the CONTENTdm data management interface, many of these materials are available through the U. Grant Miller Library Digital Archives, a multimedia collection of historical material from college's history, spanning the history of the log colleges, Washington College, Jefferson College, and Washington & Jefferson College.
