The Branford Price Millar Library is the

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

Portland State University Portland State University (PSU) is a public research university in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in 1946 as a post-secondary educational institution for World War II veterans. It evolved into a four-year college over the following two decad ...

(PSU) in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Built in 1968, the academic library was doubled in size in 1991 and houses over 1 million volumes. The five-story building is located on the school's campus on the

South Park Blocks The South Park Blocks form a city park in downtown Portland, Oregon. ''The Oregonian'' has called it Portland's "extended family room", as Pioneer Courthouse Square is known as Portland's "living room". Twelve blocks in length, it is intersecte ...

Downtown Portland Downtown Portland is the city center of Portland, Oregon, United States. It is on the west bank of the Willamette River in the northeastern corner of the southwest section of the city and where most of the city's high-rise buildings are found ...

and is the largest academic library in the Portland area.

History

In 1959, the first PSU library building, Library East, was completed under the presidency of Branford Millar, second president of Portland State College, serving from 1959 to 1968.PSU Timeline: PSU at 50. ''

The Oregonian ''The Oregonian'' is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 18 ...

'', February 15, 1996. That library had its 1 millionth visitor in 1962 and was replaced in 1968 with the Branford P. Millar Memorial Library. Portland State was known as Portland State College until 1969. In August 1989, construction began on an $11 million expansion of the library that doubled the size of the facility.PSU library work under way. ''

'', August 24, 1989. Constructed by Wildish Building Company and designed by architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the expansion added the curved glass wall on the east face of the building providing views of the

. Paid for by the state of Oregon, the expansion also remodeled the existing structure. The addition was completed in 1991 with a dedication ceremony held on November 3, 1991. At that time, the library contained 850,000 volumes. In 1992, the library joined a Portland area electronic library network. A former library employee was convicted of embezzling more than $200,000 from the library in 1997. The Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea) tree in front of the Library was designated a Portland Heritage Tree by the Portland City Council in 1995. It was planted in about 1890 by the family of Joseph Franklin Watson in front of their home. After demolishing the home and preserving the tree in the mid 1960s for the first phase of the library, the decision to build around the tree was made in March or April 1986 on the recommendation of architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, PSU's Library Addition Committee, the campus community, and the city’s foresters. The Millar Library was remodeled in 2001 at a cost of $2.8 million to create a learning center, technology upgrades, and new furnishings.Scopel, Lee. Research and learning center under construction at PSU. ''

Daily Journal of Commerce The ''Daily Journal of Commerce'' (DJC) is a U.S. newspaper published Monday, Wednesday and Friday in Portland, Oregon. It features business, construction, real estate, legal news and public notices. It is a member of American Court & Commercial ...

'', July 17, 2001. Funds came from private donations, the state, and the federal government. The library launched the Oregon Sustainable Community Digital Library in 2005 to contain

land use planning Land use planning is the process of regulating the use of land by a central authority. Usually, this is done to promote more desirable social and environmental outcomes as well as a more efficient use of resources. More specifically, the goals ...

documents created in Oregon. Until 2007, Millar Library served as the state's Regional Federal Depository Library when it became one of four libraries sharing the collection.

Building

Branford Price Millar Library, PSU (2014) - 04

Branford Price Millar Library is housed in a six-story building on the PSU campus. The building includes a curved exterior wall covered with ceiling-to-floor windows on the eastern side of the building, wrapping around a copper beech tree planted on the site in the 1800s. Tan colored bricks are used for the other exterior walls. Inside, the library contains study rooms, a computer lab, offices, and the school's archives office in addition to the library's collections. With of space, the library is the largest academic library in the

Portland metropolitan area The Portland metropolitan area is a metro area in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington centered on the principal city of Portland, Oregon. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) identifies it as the Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, ...

and covers an entire city block.

Collections

The library has a total of 1,430,929 print volumes in its collections and an annual circulation of 162,244 items (in 2014-2-15). In 2014-2015, the library received 1,076,571 visitors. PSU Library houses archival materials relating to the

Hanford Site The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. The site has been known by many names, including SiteW a ...

and

Trojan Nuclear Power Plant Trojan Nuclear Power Plant was a pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant (Westinghouse design) in the northwest United States, located southeast of Rainier, Oregon, and the only commercial nuclear power plant to be built in Oregon. There w ...

, and it is a

federal depository library The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is a government program created to make U.S. federal government publications available to the public at no cost. As of April 2021, there are 1,114 depository libraries in the United States and its ter ...

. The library is also a member of the Orbis Cascade Alliance. The library holds the Dark Horse Comic Collection, a gift from Dark Horse that brings two copies of every comic book, graphic novel, figurine, and more published and produced by publisher Dark Horse. The library manages PDXScholar, the open access, digital,

institutional repository An institutional repository is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published work ...

for the university.PDXScholar
Portland State University Library. Retrieved April 7, 2016.

References

External links

Portland State University LibraryPDXScholar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Millar Library 1968 establishments in Oregon Federal depository libraries Libraries established in 1968 Libraries in Portland, Oregon Library buildings completed in 1968 Portland State University buildings University and college academic libraries in the United States

History

Building

Collections

See also

References

External links