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Library

Wide angle of the library, a full shelf with books on display in the foreground. Blurred students walk through the library,
A wide angle of three students playing chess in a library
Th school library with wood paneled walls. Two students sit at a long table with green lamps.
An overhead view of a library with rows of books and shared study areas with low tables and comfortable chairs
A long, divided wooden table, where students study under green lamps on either side.
Two students with laptops sit at a table in the library

At the heart of Groton's Schoolhouse is the McCormick Library, where students and faculty find books, magazines, and research materials to support their coursework and to feed their personal reading interests.

The library welcomes students for individual and group study and for classroom instruction. They might visit the library with a class to bolster research skills, settle into a small study room for collaborative work, prepare for a test at a quiet carrel, or relax with friends or a good book in front of the fireplace.

Resources include an extensive collection of print books, well over one hundred print magazines and journals, national and local newspapers, and electronic databases that access hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. The on-site book collection and the vast digital collections are easy to search through our online catalog.

Throughout the year, the library hosts special events and programming designed to instill in students a lifelong love of reading. "Books for Break" offers students an array of young adult titles as they embark on a school vacation, and the library's Summer Book Club matches students and faculty to read and discuss a book of their choice.

The library also houses special collections of Groton-related materials, including an alumni author collection and Grotoniana showcasing the history of the school.

The school library, a round table at the center, reads %22Welcome to the Library.%22

Researching Online

Besides an extensive collection of books in print, Groton’s library offers access to numerous digital sources of information.
 

  • Groton School Library Catalog
  • Artstor
  • The Chicago Manual of Style Online
  • CQ Researcher Archive Plus (1925–present)
  • EBSCO eBook Academic Collection
  • EBSCO Discovery Articles
  • Encyclopedia Britannica Online
  • Gale Database Collection
  • Global Issues in Context
  • Health and Wellness Resource Center
  • JSTOR
  • Kanopy (video subscription service, for faculty)
  • Loeb Latin and Greek Classics
  • The New York Times
  • The New York Times Archive
  • Noodle Tools
  • Oxford English Dictionary
  • Project Muse
  • ProQuest Historical Newspapers
  • ProQuest Massachusetts Newspapers
  • Rotunda: America Founding Era Collection
  • Salem Press History
  • Science Direct
  • Science in Context
  • U.S. History in Context
  • World History in Context

Alumni Collection

A pile of books written by Groton alumni within the library

 

 

One point of pride in the McCormick Library is the collection of books written by Groton School graduates, the earliest of which were published in 1919. The still-growing alumni book collection includes more than six hundred books by nearly three hundred authors. Highlights include:

  • Pulitzer Prize winner Oliver La Farge, who graduated from Groton in 1920 and won a Pulitzer for Laughing Boy ten years later
  • Louis S. Auchincloss '35, P'82, who contributed fifty-nine books
  • Well-known contemporary novelists Ben Coes '85 and Curtis Sittenfeld '93
  • Cookbook author Merrill Stubbs Dorman '95

Michael Knox Beran ’84, P’20, ’23 (with four books himself in the collection), said “the alumni collection abounds in books that are absorbing to read and bear witness to a high degree of literary sensibility.”