[3] The University Library grew from an original donation of Dean John Letcher Patterson's personal collection in the early 1900s.

The brick and exposed concrete design of the building incorporated the character of the open spaces on campus and the surrounding structures.

The new 51,000 sq.ft., three-story addition featured the relocated McConnell Center for Political Leadership, a new 24-hour study area, a café, new instruction labs, an auditorium, and the new Robotic Retrieval System (RRS).

This temperature and humidity-controlled storage system, one of the first in the nation, has a 600,000 volume capacity and retrieves patron requests in approximately 2 minutes.

It includes 1) Photographic Archives housing nearly 2 million photographs, 2) Rare Books and manuscripts focusing on local, regional, national, and international topics, 3) the University Archives and Records Center, and 4) the Digital Initiatives office which is responsible for digital collections[11] of images, documents, and oral histories.

The chair holder, whose office is located in Ekstrom Library, focuses on concerns and policies related to scholarly communication and copyright law at the university, state, and national levels.