Collections Overview
50 million items supporting teaching, research and patient care
Our collections include print and ebooks, newspapers, maps, photographs, art, historical archives, and other materials in physical and digital formats.
We also provide campuswide subscriptions to a wide range of licensed resources, from journals and library databases to streaming media, clinical apps, and lab experiment videos.
And, as part of the University of California, we offer access to the entire UC collection of more than 50 million items — the largest research collection in the country.
Archives and Special Collections
Explore a wide range of primary sources including photographs, correspondence, faculty papers, rare books, manuscripts, art, memorabilia, and more. Highlights include our world-renowned wine library, collections on the American West and California history, the Map Collection, and the UC Davis University Archives.
Art
Shields Library has more than 300 pieces of art on public display, including works by former UC Davis faculty members William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, and other influential leaders of Northern California’s Funk Art Movement of the 1960s.
Books, Ebooks, Databases and Journals
Browse the books on each of Shields Library’s five floors and at Blaisdell Medical Library, or access journal articles, ebooks and databases online. Find everything you need in UC’s online catalog.
Digitized Collections
Access thousands of digitized and born-digital items from the library’s distinctive collections related to agriculture, food, wine, UC Davis and California history.
Videos and Music
Find music, documentaries, feature films, theater performances on DVD or streaming online. Print collections include sheet music and scores.
Interactive Science and Clinical Tools
Search the latest biomedical, pharmacological and clinical medicine content from any device with tools like Audio Digest, BrowZine and IBM Micromedex. Find peer-reviewed videos and tutorials of scientific experiments, an app for learning anatomy, and more. See our health sciences resources page to learn more.
Accessing the Collections
Physical collections are held at Shields Library on the Davis campus, Blaisdell Medical Library at UC Davis Health in Sacramento, and at UC’s Northern Regional Library Facility (NRLF) in Richmond, California. To find or request items from the collections, use UC Library Search.
Digital items are available in our Digital Collections, Calisphere and the Online Archive of California.
Collection Development
The library strategically collects and curates content to support research, instruction and patient care across all disciplines at UC Davis, with an emphasis on areas of excellence for the university such as agriculture, food and wine, veterinary medicine, and California and regional history.