About the Shakespeare Institute Library

​The Shakespeare Institute Library, also known as the Johnson Library, contains over 60,000 volumes, archives, manuscripts, and audio-visual collections relating to Shakespeare and Renaissance drama. This includes a wide variety of different publications covering the literary, cultural, political, religious, and social history of the period​. Our holdings and the other work of the library helps to support the campus-based and online postgraduate degrees delivered by the Shakespeare Institute​. We aim to collect every significant publication required for these studies. 

The library opened in 1995 on the Shakespeare Institute's site at Mason Croft. The University of Birmingham’s Special Collections department comprises three distinct research libraries: the Barber Fine Art Library, the Cadbury Research Library, and the Shakespeare Institute Library.