The Joseph Mark Lauinger Library is the main library of Georgetown University and the center of the seven-library Georgetown library system that includes 3.5 million volumes. It holds 1.7 million volumes on six floors and has accommodations for individual and group study on all levels. It is generally referred to colloquially as "Lau" by Georgetown students.
Facade and tower of Lauinger Library
Georgetown University is a private Jesuit research university in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic institution of higher education in the United States and the nation's first federally chartered university.
John Carroll, the first Archbishop of Baltimore and founder of Georgetown University in 1789
Georgetown University c. 1850
Union Army soldiers on Theodore Roosevelt Island with the Potomac River and the university visible in the background in 1861 at the beginning of the American Civil War
Patrick Francis Healy, the first African-American to become a Jesuit, helped transform the school into a modern university after the Civil War.