Earl Gregg Swem Library
library at the College of William & Mary
The Earl Gregg Swem Library (colloquially Swem Library) is located on Landrum Drive at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. The library is named for Earl Gregg Swem, College Librarian from 1920-1944. In 2025, the Princeton Review rated William & Mary's library system as the third best in the United States. The ranking was based on a survey of 170,000 students from 391 campuses nationwide.
Construction and renovations
Detailed discussions of plans for the library were held in 1963 and the groundbreaking ceremonies were held later that year on October 11, 1963, at Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall. The actual groundbreaking occurred a few weeks after the ceremonies. The cornerstone of the library was laid on October 22, 1964, and the building was scheduled for completion around December 1965. The building officially opened on January 4, 1966, although it was not fully complete. The official dedication ceremony for the library was held on Charter Day, February 12, 1966. The Tucker-Coleman Room of the library was dedicated on November 11, 1966.
“Earl Gregg Swem Library” enters the record as library at the College of William & Mary. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Earl, Gregg and Swem can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Earl Gregg Swem Library” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Earl, Gregg and Swem provides the most credible route into that argument.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5325885. VIAF identifies the subject as 140065634. The Library of Congress control number is n87101450. Authority coordinates are 37.270, -76.716. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1944, 2025 and 1963.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Earl Gregg Swem Library” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.