About the Butler Reference Collection

• Rooms 310 and 310 house Butler Library's print reference collection.
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•   The reference desk, located in room 301, is staffed by reference librarians with expertise in the humanities and history, from ancient and medieval history to women and gender studies.
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• The print collection contains approximately 50,000 reference works. While subject bibliographies constitute the backbone of the collection, other notable strengths include an impressive number of current directories, guides, handbooks, a wide range of language dictionaries, periodical indexes from all over the world, and a particularly strong collection of biographical dictionaries.
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• Fourteen LibraryWeb stations allow access to over 1000 databases licensed and owned by Columbia Libraries, including reference materials, full text documents, indexing and abstracting services, and e-books.
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• Four CD-Rom workstations allow access to several periodical indexes, abstracts, and large reference works.
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• Room 310 houses the main card catalog for the Columbia University Libraries, an historic record of Columbia University materials. However, start your research with CLIO -- the Libraries' online catalog -- for current holdings.