Mission Statement
The Harold F. Johnson Library promotes the academic goals of the College: teaching, research, and learning. Our collections reflect the intellectual interests and concerns of our students and faculty, with particular focus on the curriculum of the five schools of Natural Science; Social Science; Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies; Interdisciplinary Arts; and Cognitive Science.

Librarians provide instruction and support in locating and critically evaluating information in any form and help provide access to resources, online and in print.

Students and faculty using the Hampshire College library also have access to all the library resources of our consortial neighbors: Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In addition, through full-text databases and interlibrary loan, students and faculty have access to the wider world of information resources.

Library Facts and Figures
Library collections, as of March 2008:

Books: 118,647
Bound volumes of journals: 13,626
Current journal subscriptions (Print): 307
E-journal subscriptions (Online): 28,648
Other online resources: 328
Div IIIs: 2716
Music CDs: 4133
Slides: 28,898
Videos and DVDs: 3,190
16mm Films: 894

ALEPH, the Five College integrated library system from major library systems vendor Ex Libris, provides access to Hampshire's library collections as well as those of the other Five Colleges. It allows Hampshire students, faculty, and staff to request books from the other colleges to be sent to Hampshire for pickup, as well as view and/or renew the books they have checked out from each of the libraries.

Library Gift Policy
The Hampshire College library welcomes monetary and in-kind gifts of recent material (not older than five years).

Monetary gifts may be directed to a variety of purposes, including purchase of materials for the collection, or endowments for continuing support.

Because of severely limited shelf space, the library must be very selective in adding material to the collection. We will consider gifts in all media, but unfortunately are not able to accept all offered material. The subject librarians (listed below) generally determine the suitability of material based on currency and relevance to the Hampshire curriculum. Please contact one of the librarians for information about donating to the Hampshire College library.

As charitable donations, gifts to the library may constitute a tax deduction for the donor. Internal Revenue Service regulations make it the responsibility of the donor to obtain legal advice on tax deductions, to arrange for appraisals for materials of significant value, and to maintain an inventory of materials donated.

Hampshire College Subject Librarians:

Rachel Beckwith, Arts Librarian
Caro Pinto, Social Science and Emerging Technologies Librarian
Helaine Selin, Natural Science and Cognitive Science Librarian
Bonnie Vigeland, Humanities Librarian