The organization is located on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City and employs more than 500 professional and support staff.

[4] In 1763 the college received over 1,000 volumes from Reverend Duncombe Bristowe of London, through the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

[5]: 430  Only six or seven hundred items from the King's College library were recovered following the war, and only 111 remain in Columbia University's collections today.

[5]: 430  Following the war, the newly renamed Columbia College's library was rebuilt and grew over time through gifts, deposits, and purchases; by 1863 it owned nearly 15,000 volumes.

[3]: 196–197  Following its opening in 1934, only special collections, Columbiana, and the East Asian, mathematics, and general sciences sections remained in Low; those too would eventually be relocated elsewhere.

"[20]: 432 In order to slow the hemorrhaging of books from the library's collections, it was restructured in 1817 and 1821, when it was placed under the control of the college's president and then board of trustees, respectively.

[20]: 434  The first full-time librarian appointed by Columbia was classics professor Nathaniel Fish Moore in 1837; he would go on to serve as the college's president following his tenure.