Charles Wyville Thomson research library

The Charles Wyville Thomson library is a library of approximately 5,000 books and a legacy of 30,000 printed serial volumes (ca 1,300 serial titles), and incorporates a historical collection of expedition reports and rare books. In addition to these holdings, the library service maintains access to over 4000 e-journals through SAMS subscriptions, as well as many more ebooks and e-journals via the UHI library service: however, access to the latter is restricted to SAMS staff, fellows and students.

The library, based in the Sir John Murray Building, is available to staff, students, fellows and tenants at SAMS. SAMS Members may use the facility as a reference library during working hours. There are also has a number of computer terminals for use in accessing electronic resources: and for the benefit of our students, they also host the same set of software as in the student computer labs.

The library goes back to book donations by Sir Charles Wyville Thomson (1830-1882), a Scottish zoologist who led the Challenger Expedition (1872-76) that established marine science as a discipline.

If you would like to visit our library, please contact Rachel Culver (E: rachel.culver@sams.ac.uk).