Libraries

Classics Library Collections

Banner collections documentary text, literary text, artefact

Please see the sub menu on the left tub for other special collections of the Classics Library.


UC'S BEST KEPT SECRET!

The John Miller Burnam Classics Library possesses one of the world's largest (almost 300,000 print volumes and a few thousand e-books and e-journals) and most distinguished collections of Classical Studies with particular strengths in Greek and Latin philology, Aegean Bronze Age archaeology, and Latin palaeography. It is unique in housing under one roof the full spectrum of subdisciplines within the broad definition of Classics – language and literature, art and archaeology, history, politics, philosophy, religion, law, science, medicine, in addition to Modern Greek studies, papyrology, epigraphy, and palaeography, and more – spanning five millennia of recorded history and the vast geographic areas of Ancient Greece, including Asia Minor, the Black Sea region, and Magna Graecia, pre-Roman Italy, including the Etruscan civilization, and the full expanses of the Roman Empire, including Eastern Rome (Byzantium) in addition to sizeable collections covering the Near East and Ancient Egypt. 

Not only do the Library's extensive collections stimulate and facilitate discovery, study, and research, but they also generate connections and discussions among our permanent and itinerant world-renowned classical philologists, archaeologists, ancient historians, and others, which contribute to the productivity and creativity and knowledge of our students and faculty. Our goal is not only to satisfy the research needs of our current scholars but also to build collections that we believe will have lasting value to meet future needs.

For this reason, our policy is not to weed the classics collections unless we have multiple copies of a book or if a book has become illegible because of poor physical condition in which case we attempt to replace it if possible. We do, however, always keep multiple editions that may differ from one another in some respect.  Another policy is to maintain all print volumes in the physical library proper and not have them stored in an outside facility for as long as possible as we acknowledge the considerable value in keeping classics materials together to facilitate browsing and speedy retrieval. 

By R. Lindau

Ut conclave sine libris, ita corpus sine anima -- A room without books is like a body without a soul

attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106–43 BCE