The Bard Graduate Center houses an extensive research library supporting advanced studies in the decorative arts, design, garden history, landscape studies, and culture. The library subscribes to more than 250 periodicals and provides online access to numerous electronic journals, including those in JSTOR, the scholarly journal archive, and Project Muse. The library collection comprises approximately 40,000 volumes, including rare books and microforms. In addition, there is an extensive collection of auction catalogues as well as online access to the auction index Artfact and the SCIPIO Art and Rare Book Sale Catalog database. Students have in-house and off-site access to numerous periodical indexes, including Art Abstracts, Art Index Retrospective, Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, Bibliography of the History of Art, Design, and Applied Arts Index, and the Index to Nineteenth-Century American Art Periodicals. The library also supports bibliographic searches in major union catalogues such as Research Libraries Information Network and Online Computer Library Center. The library encourages students to take advantage of the rich resources in New York City and facilitates their access by participating in the Metropolitan New York Library Council, a consortium of academic and special libraries. The library offers interlibrary loan service when material is not available locally.

The Bard Graduate Center library is a noncirculating collection available to enrolled students and alumni/ae. As a participant in the decorative arts community, the library welcomes visitors by appointment.

The Visual Media Resources department maintains the teaching collection of slides and digital images for faculty use and provides equipment, support, and training for students, faculty, and alumni wishing to produce their own slides or digital images for teaching and presentations. In collaboration with the Visual Resources Department at Bard College, VMR is actively building a collection of digital images that are made available to faculty and students on the MDID platform.

The slide collection currently consists of approximately 50,000 slides, many of which have been catalogued in an electronic database. The digital image collection comprises approximately 10,000 images to support survey courses in the decorative arts and material culture, as well as other selected areas of study.

Visual Media Resources is located on the third floor at 38 West 86th Street. Staff is available Monday through Thursday from 9am to 7pm, and Fridays from 9am to 5pm.