Visit the Rare Book Room

Appointments and Visitors

Rare book materials are available for legitimate research purposes on an appointment-only basis.

Hours for viewing items from the Rare Book Room are the same as the service hours of the Marie Louise Rosenthal Library, Tuesday-Friday, 1pm-4pm. Please be prepared to provide Library staff with a list of items you wish to view, including author, title and call number of the item before your scheduled appointment. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need assistance searching for a particular item. Email reflib@fieldmuseum.org to schedule an appointment or to make an inquiry about the collection.

We realize that visitors from all over the world come to utilize the specimen collections here at the Field Museum. Oftentimes, they make use of the library as well during their visit. We encourage these visitors to the Library and hope that we can meet their research needs. That being said, if you are intending to utilize collections from the Rare Book Room in addition to specimen collections, please contact the Library for an appointment ahead of time.