Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

The library is also home to the university archives which, in addition to institutional records, also contains the papers of many important Canadian literary figures including Margaret Atwood and Leonard Cohen.

Some of these items in the collection included medieval manuscripts, early printed books, and special volumes of later periods that had been presented by Queen Victoria to the university.

In 1973 his great-grandsons, Sidney and Charles Fisher, donated to the library their own collections of Shakespeare, various twentieth-century authors, and etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar.

It forms part of a complex with the John P. Robarts Research Library for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Claude Bissel Building which houses the Faculty of Information.

Contrary to widespread internet claims,[5][6] the library does not have Darwin's proof copy with annotations of On the Origin of Species (1859); the library does however have annotated proof sheets of: The Power of Movement in Plants,[7] The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,[8] and The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom.

At one of the open atria at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, a seminar room is situated at the base under a mezzanine and upper-level shelving.
The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (foreground) was opened in 1973, and forms a part of a larger building complex with Robarts Library (background)