Thomas J. Watson Library

Thomas J. Watson Library is the central research library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its collection of books and periodicals relating to the history of art is one of the most comprehensive in the world. The primary mission of the library is to support the research activities of the Museum staff; in addition, it welcomes a broad range of students and researchers college age and above.

• Register online to use the library. Once registered, you may request books for use in the library. (Watson Library is a noncirculating collection.) Books requested from Watson Library and from most departmental libraries are paged for visitors for use in Watson Library on a daily schedule.
• Search for material in WATSONLINE, the online catalog of the Museum's libraries.
• Explore the Digital Collections from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, a growing repository of digitized material.
• Find information on works of art in the Museum by consulting the Collection, the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, and Museum collection and exhibition catalogues, many of which are available online in MetPublications or in the libraries' Digital Collections.

The library contains more than nine hundred thousand volumes of books, periodicals, exhibition catalogues, and auction catalogues; eleven thousand periodical titles; collections of autograph letters; and files relating to individual artists and to the history of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Lita Annenberg Hazen and Joseph H. Hazen Center for Electronic Information Resources, an integral part of Thomas J. Watson Library, provides access to an extensive collection of databases, full-text online journals, and indexed online resources for the history of art. It is the base for the library's extensive program of instruction in the use of art-related electronic resources.

For more information, call 212-650-2225 or email watson.library@metmuseum.org.

Hours
For visitors: Monday–Thursday, 10:00 a.m.–5:15 p.m.; Friday, 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.; Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
For Museum staff: Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.; Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
See the Library Portal for holiday closures.

Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest, and see the Museum libraries' blog, In Circulation.