University of Florida Marston Science Library

Marston Science Library

Type	Public
Established	1987
Location	Gainesville, Florida, USA
Website	Marston Science Library

The University of Florida Marston Science Library (MSL) is the science and engineering library of the University of Florida located in Gainesville, Florida, and is administered by the university's George A. Smathers Libraries system. The Marston Science Library hosts the university's extensive collections in agriculture, biological sciences, chemical and physical sciences, engineering, mathematics and statistics, as well as the Map and Imagery Library and the Government Documents Department. The library is located in the center of the university's campus, and is adjacent to such campus landmarks as Turlington Hall, the University Auditorium and Century Tower. In 2008, MSL began hosting an annual competition, the Elegance of Science,^[1] in which University of Florida faculty, staff and students submit artwork on the topic of science.

Government Documents Department

The Government Documents Department, housed in the Marston Science Library Building is a regional, federal, state, and European Union documents depository serving Florida and the Caribbean. The Government Documents Department includes the GIS Unit and the Map and Imagery Library.

The GIS Unit provides support for the many University of Florida programs and research efforts using GIS and remote sensing. The Map and Imagery Library contains more than 497,800 maps, 266,500 aerial photographs, 2,250 remote sensing images, and 7,215 atlases and reference books. The Map and Imagery Library has general map coverage worldwide. Special collections include Florida, Latin America, the United States, Africa, and the Holy Land.

History

The Marston Science Library was named for the seventh president of the University of Florida, Robert Q. Marston, who served from 1974 to 1984.^[2] Marston was a medical doctor, research scientist and Rhodes Scholar, who previously served as the dean of the University of Mississippi School of Medicine (1961–1965) and the director of the National Institutes of Health (1968–1973).^[3] Completed in 1987, the Marston Science Library brought together several existing science branch libraries, including the Agriculture Library (founded in 1905), the Physics Library (1909), the Botany Library (1909), the Engineering Library (1912), the Chemistry Library (1923) and the Biology-Geology Library (1947).

See also

• History of the University of Florida
• List of University of Florida buildings
• List of University of Florida presidents
• University of Florida Campus Historic District

References

External links

• Marston Science Library
• Government Documents Department
• Maps & Imagery Library
• Marston Science Library within the University of Florida Libraries' History
• Informational Leaflet on the Marston Library (2002 edition) from the University of Florida Digital Collections