The University Libraries support the educational objectives of the university and meet the teaching, research, and informational needs of the campus community.  Housed in three locations—the Thomas Jefferson Library and the St. Louis Mercantile Library at UM-St. Louis (north campus) and the Ward E. Barnes Library (south campus)--the Libraries' collections consist of more than one million volumes, 2,900 periodical subscriptions, 1.3 million U.S. government documents, over one million items in microform, and numerous special and manuscript collections.

Materials from the libraries of the four campuses of the University of Missouri, as well as the other institutions belonging to the MOBIUS consortium, can be identified in the MERLIN/MOBIUS online catalogs. Through the MERLIN/MOBIUS catalogs, users can request items from other institutions to be transferred to UM-St. Louis for check-out. A full range of services, including interlibrary loan, reference assistance, library instruction and access to a large number of databases are also available through the Libraries.