The Polish Room is located in room 517 in the Lockwood Library, which is part of the Arts & Sciences Libraries at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The Lockwood Memorial Library is on the North Campus of the University at Buffalo. Lockwood is part of the Arts & Sciences Libraries and is open to everyone in the UB community and to the general public.Visit us in person or explore our website to learn more about our collections and services.

Description of the Polish Collection

The collection includes over 12,000 volumes. Its strengths are in literature and history, but the genealogical literature and the language sections are very strong for a collection of this size. Because of the broad scope of Polish studies, the range in Library of Congress class numbers is literally A to Z. In addition to the book collection, the Polish Room possesses a number of unique materials, which include; 21 manuscripts of the Polish kings from the 16th to 18th centuries, and letters and other signed documents of important people of the 20th century, including writers such as: Stefan Zeromski, Maria Konopnicka, and Maria Dabrowska. There are also two rare and valuable Polish books.

In other formats, the Polish Room has more than 100 videorecordings, including Polish commercial and art films, opera and theater productions, and a number of audiotapes of Polish literary works. There are a few Solidarnosc documents and 135 underground press books on microfiche, part of the Solidarnosc fiche collection assembled at Harvard University. Also on microfiche are the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty background reports on Poland from 1967 to 1989. On microfilm we have a collection of immigrant publications that comprise part of the Immigrant in America collection. Additional materials on Poland and Polish Americans are available in the general Lockwood Memorial Library collections.