Navigating Knowledge: A Guide to Brown University's Science Library Resources
Brown University offers a wealth of library resources to support its graduate students' academic and research endeavors. These resources span various disciplines and formats, from traditional books and journals to cutting-edge digital tools and services. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the science library resources available at Brown, including physical collections, digital resources, expert support, and specialized services. Through the Library, graduate students have access to outstanding campus spaces, library research experts, data services and physical and digital resources covering over 80 core academic areas and myriad interdisciplinary subjects.
Accessing Brown's Library Collections
BruKnow, the Library’s search engine, serves as the primary gateway to Brown’s extensive collections. It indexes over 7 million volumes, including over 3 million ebooks, more than 250,000 journals, and over 500 research databases. BruKnow provides the call number and building location for physical materials as well as direct links to online content. If connecting from off-campus, be sure to learn about off-campus access. While BruKnow provides access to many of the Library’s collections and resources, newspapers and other resources like streaming media, interactive content and tools and even some ebooks and journals must be accessed directly on the publisher’s platform.
The Library’s physical collections are housed in five campus buildings as well as the nearby Library Collections Annex.
Key Library Locations
- John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library: Known as “the Rock,” this is the primary teaching and research library for the humanities and social sciences. Book checkout, interlibrary loan and help services are available on the entrance level (Level 1). On Level 2, graduate students will find the Vincent J. Wernig Graduate Student Reading Room and the Racial Justice Research Center.
- Sciences Library: The tallest building on campus, known as “the SciLi," holds print materials in medicine, psychology, neural science, biology, chemistry, earth, environmental and planetary sciences, physics, engineering, computer science and pure and applied mathematics. The classic and grand Willis Reading Room is open to all for quiet study. The Gildor Family Special Collections Reading Room is open to all Brown community members as well as the public via appointment. The newly renovated conservation lab is used to care for library materials, and can be used for collaborative class instruction.
- Virginia Baldwin Orwig Music Library: Located in the Orwig Music Building and known as “Orwig,” this library houses the main teaching and research collections in music and related areas such as dance and musical theater. Its collections include LPs, books, scores, periodicals, compact discs and DVDs. Media materials (CDs, DVDs, LPs) circulate to all members of the Brown community, and Orwig has playback equipment for a number of legacy formats including CD, DVD, LP, VHS and Blu-Ray. Graduate students can borrow media materials for one week.
- Champlin Memorial Medical Library: Located within The Warren Alpert Medical School, known as “Champlin,” it is open 24/7 to medical students. Though it contains no on-site physical collections, online access to the Library's extensive collection of electronic journals, textbooks and databases is fully available with a Brown ID via Core Health Sciences Resources. Medical faculty and staff may use Champlin while in the medical school building during business hours; after-hours access is restricted to medical students.
- The Annmary Brown Memorial: This unique building, completed in 1907, is a museum, mausoleum and memorial. Designed by architect Norman Isham, the Annmary Brown Memorial’s bronze doors feature symbolic representations of Art and Learning, signaling to visitors the many treasures to explore and the array of cultural arts programming throughout the year. On exhibit are paintings from the collection of Annmary Brown and her husband, General Rush Hawkins, and special collections items from the John Hay Library. (currently closed to the public)
- Library Collections Annex: A high-density storage facility with a capacity of 1.8 million volumes, located approximately four miles from campus. Materials shelved at the annex can be requested using BruKnow for retrieval and use on campus. Journal articles from titles shelved at the annex can be scanned and delivered to your desktop.
- John Carter Brown Library: The John Carter Brown Library, an independently administered and funded center for advanced research in history and the humanities, is also located on the Brown campus, right on the main green. It is home to one of the world’s outstanding collections of printed books and other materials related to the early Americas. The JCB's collection represents more than 65,000 rare books, maps and manuscripts created in more than 200 languages spanning more than three centuries. A Welcome and Access plan initiated in 2021 led to the renovation of the historic building’s west entrance and a new programming plan that reflects the JCB's commitment to digital collection.
Digital Resources for Scientific Research
Brown University Library provides access to a wide array of digital resources crucial for scientific research, including databases, search tools, and online collections. These resources cater to diverse disciplines within the sciences, ensuring that researchers have the necessary tools for their work.
- PubMed: This database offers millions of citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, full text from PubMed Central, and online books, from the 1800s-present.
- Scopus: A cross-disciplinary abstract and citation database that allows for forward and back citation searching. These databases index citations to references, which allows for forward-searching and citation chaining.
- SciFinder: A comprehensive discovery tool of chemical information.
- Derwent Innovation Index: A search and data visualization tool for exploring patent information. Topic coverage includes botany, pharmacology, evolutionary ecology, toxicology, microbiology, & biochemistry.
Special Collections
Holdings range from Babylonian clay tablets and Egyptian papyri to current-day books, manuscripts and ephemera. The collections include some 400,000 monographs, 1.5 million archival files and records, 500,000 pieces of sheet music and 60,000 each of broadsides, photographs and prints. The Hay’s collecting policy is organized around seven broad areas of distinctive strength and three integrative themes in the sciences - including American literature and popular culture, LGBTQ writers, speculative fiction, political and diplomatic history and propaganda, health and medicine, the history of mathematics, and military and society. as well as those affected by the American prison system. See our selective list of special collections.
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The Hay is also available as a primary source laboratory for instructors and students; it hosts over 150 class sessions from nearly all Brown departments each year, and staff are available to teach sessions and to help graduate students learn about researching and teaching with primary sources. The Hay is also a leader in primary source pedagogy, and large numbers of Brown students and faculty engage with the John Hay Library as a site of interdisciplinary exploration and active teaching, learning and research using special collections. Many graduate students conduct their dissertation research using the Hay’s special collections. Programs, exhibitions and collection development at the Hay is continually transformed by and with Brown’s vibrant intellectual community. Special collections materials can be requested online with an account in the Hay’s request system.
Borrowing and Access Services
Brown students have access to a range of borrowing and access services to facilitate their research.
Borrowing Beyond Brown: Brown students can borrow and place requests for books and journal articles (in pdf form) from our Ivy Plus partners, as well as receive on-site access and borrowing privileges at their libraries. In addition, books and journal articles from several thousand research libraries worldwide are available through interlibrary loan. Learn more about borrowing from other institutions.
Course Reserves: The Course Reserves portal is used to make text, audio and video materials available for classes. Anything placed on reserve will also be accessible to students in Canvas.
Study Spaces: Graduate students can reserve group study rooms at the Rockefeller and Sciences libraries online. Graduate TAs may also access a limited number of small study/collaboration rooms to conduct online sections. Registration is required through 25Live.
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Carrels and Lockers: To accommodate the use of materials in long-term projects, graduate and medical students can apply to reserve study carrels at the Rockefeller, Sciences and Orwig libraries by inquiring at the Rockefeller Library service desk. Lockers located in the stacks at the Rockefeller Library are available to all carrel-holding graduate and medical students. Combination lockers are also available in the Wernig Graduate Student Reading Room at the Rock. All lockers are issued at the circulation desk. Lockers can be renewed and kept for as long as the student is matriculated at Brown.
Library Academic and Research Support Services
The Library offers comprehensive support services designed to assist you throughout your graduate research journey. Services include support for citation management tools like EndNote and Zotero, expert guidance on copyright and fair use and extensive digital scholarship support for data analysis, visualization and mapping. Whether you need help with literature reviews, accessing special collections or managing research data, library experts provide personalized consultations and training to the academic community at Brown.
Library Experts and Research Consultations: Library experts, including librarians assigned to work directly with each academic department, are available to help you take full advantage of the Library's incredible collections and resources. In addition to offering personalized research consultations, librarians curate research guides, build collections to support individual research needs and offer workshops and other educational opportunities to upskill and engage with research tools and methods across the disciplines. You can schedule a consultation with the library expert in your field of study when you begin your program at Brown. Through our Ask-a-Librarian service, you can connect with library experts and staff who provide guidance on library services and resources for your specific field of study.
Research Guides and FAQ: Research Guides are available for all academic departments on a wide variety of specialized topics and courses. Online tutorials offer curated information to help you explore the Library’s resources, learn how to use a new tool or method, discover a new data workflow and connect to public and open access digital content.
Library Instruction and Workshops: Librarians are dedicated partners in your academic success, offering course-integrated instruction, tutorials, and specialized workshops in areas like advanced searching, information and data literacy, archival and primary source research, GIS, data management, digital scholarship and citation management.
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Research Lifecycle Support: In addition to traditional library resources, the Library supports the full research lifecycle with services for grant applications, data management planning and scholarly publishing. Through our repository services, digital publications platform and research impact metrics, we help you preserve and showcase your scholarly work while maximizing its impact in your field. You can access these services through individual consultations, workshops or our online guides and tutorials.
Health and Biomedical Library Services: Health and Biomedical Library Services offers a variety of support and resources to help you with your research. Services include help with literature reviews, publishing, reference management, locating and managing grant-related publications, public access compliance, writing data management and sharing plans, using the Brown Digital Repository (BDR) and more. For upcoming events and workshops, see the Brown Library calendar.
Library Data Services: The Library Data Services team provides comprehensive support for finding, processing and analyzing data, with particular expertise in geospatial, census, socio-economic, financial and environmental datasets.
Digital Scholarship Opportunities
The Library offers numerous opportunities for graduate students to expand their scholarly and professional skills through direct engagement with collections and programs, currently including the Interdisciplinary Opportunities in the Humanities and Social Sciences fellowship program. The Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS), the University’s digital scholarship hub, provides inspiration, expertise, services, and teaching in digital scholarship methodologies, project development, and publication to Brown faculty, staff, and students. Graduate students have opportunities to collaborate with CDS staff on faculty-driven digital projects and publications via proctorships or employment.
Doctoral Certificate in Digital Humanities: CDS and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities are pleased to partner together to offer the Doctoral Certificate in Digital Humanities, which provides students with a foundation in digital methods and skills for their research as well as an understanding of the broader theoretical questions that digital approaches to scholarship offer. The certificate is aimed at Ph.D. students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, though Ph.D. students from all disciplines are welcome to apply. Students in the Doctoral Certificate in Digital Humanities Program are also welcome to apply for Cogut Doctoral Certificate Fellowships and students receive preference as applicants to the Montreal Digital Humanities Summer Institute Fellowship.
CDS Instruction and Consultations: CDS is here to help graduate students and scholars across the campus understand and use digital methodologies in research and scholarship. CDS staff teach year round workshops, help design class digital projects, teach digital humanities courses and offer consulting services.
Workshops: CDS offers workshops on data, tools and methods. Each summer, we offer a two-week Digital Humanities Summer Institute.
Consultations: Have a digital scholarship project you’d like help with? Wondering how digital tools might complement other aspects of your research project? CDS staff are available to meet with you to discuss your ideas to help you get started in the field of digital scholarship.
Teaching and Event Spaces
Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab: Library workshops and events are offered online and in the Rockefeller Library’s Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL), which was renovated in January 2025 as a Zoom room and is well equipped for hybrid meetings. The DSL, located on Level 1, enables scholars across disciplines to engage with research data using advanced visualization hardware and software, to examine and compare high-resolution digital content and to experience audiovisual media in a suitably equipped campus space.
Sidney E. Frank Digital Studio: The Sidney E. Frank Digital Studio on Level 1 at the Rockefeller Library provides a unique and exciting intellectual hub for digitally enhanced scholarship at Brown. Infrastructure and staff in the Digital Studio facilitate both short-term and extended engagements with academic questions that benefit from the infusion of technology and new methodologies in research and learning. Open to all faculty and students, the studio contains a soundproof audio/video recording suite and a 3D scanner.
Vincent J. Wernig Graduate Student Reading Room: The Vincent J. Wernig Graduate Student Reading Room is located on Level 2 of the Rockefeller Library, up the stairs to the right of the main entrance. It includes a large seminar room and kitchen. All graduate students can access the space by swiping their ID cards at the door.
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