University Library
Director : HARA Juri
Tokyo University of Agriculture celebrated the 125th anniversary on 2016. Before reaching the milestone, we has been promoting redevelopment of the campus in order to enhance the university’s function as an international educational institution and to progress to a research institute which take a central role globally. With such a background, the new library opened in April 2014.
The library holds a collection of approximately 550,000 items. We are unique among university libraries as 80% of the holdings deals specifically with agricultural sciences. We are also well known for our collection of classic and rare books on agriculture dating back to the days of the Edo period.
The new library was established with an aim to embody the university’s identity. The library building is next to the forested campus garden, which is regarded as a symbolic space as our university attaches weight to co-existing with nature. The building has been designed in the image of a giant tree standing powerfully in the garden. Each floors of the library is furnished with bookshelves made from domestic timber. Users can see trees of the garden down below from the library. These offer users a comfortable study environment and may help to induce a feeling of harmony with nature.
The library also has constructed facilitates to fulfill a variety of users’ needs. There include reading spaces with nearly 1,000 seats, individual rooms and open spaces for those who would like to study while in discussion with peers. For those who want to study without distraction, there are quiet rooms where noise-making devices, such as PCs and calculators, are not available to use.
With the changing of the times, the services which the library is expected to provide have also been changing. We will make every effort to respond to the diverse demands of our users. At the same time, we will stay firmly grounded on our school’s philosophy, “Practical Science”, which was uphold out by the first president of the university, YOKOI Tokiyoshi.
We endeavor to discover new things while cherishing old wisdoms. We will support our students and faculty members in the spirit of the school, and aim to continue to be the fount of information they need. We hope we will contribute to fostering human resources and to promote research for social and global development.