The genesis of the library in Visva-Bharati goes back to 1901, with the founding of the Brahmacharya asrama at Santiniketan. Rabindranath emphasized the use of books in the educational development of students. He personally supervised the selection of books, remaining alert to the needs of Santiniketan students and teachers and keeping himself aware of what was being published. When he found any lacunae in the kind of books available, he arranged to have books written and published.
The library at Visva-Bharati grew under his care with help coming from great minds all over the world. With the evolving of Visva-Bharati, Rabindranath toured Europe and America with the intention of collecting funds. He was often given large donations of books from universities, individuals and groups of well wishers. In 1921, Sylvian Levi and his colleagues at Strasbourg gifted a collection of French classics for the library at Santiniketan. In 1925, the Italian Government under Mussolini sent a handsome gift of Italian classics to Visva-Bharati as part of an offer of inter-cultural cooperation. Andree Karpeles would send books of art and periodicals like Studio International to Rabindranath who in turn gave these to the library. While in Japan, he collected a set of the famous Kokka magazine, renowned for its works of art.
The
central library has today 3,76,531 volumes of books, around 4,000
users and a daily transaction of 300 books. The library has a number
of important collections; mention may be made of the collections of
Prabodhchandra Bagchi, Pramatha Choudhuri, Humayun Kabir, Satikumar
Chattopadhyay, Lila Ray, Ashok Rudra and Abanindranath Tagore. The
library has the following departmental libraries :
Cheena
Bhavana library 
Kala
Bhavana library
Rabindra
Bhavana library
Hindi- Bhavana library
Sangit Bhavana library
Patha Bhavana library
Siksha Bhavana library Philosophy
& Religion library
Vinaya Bhavana library Siksha-Bhavana
library
Palli-Siksha Bhavana library
Palli-Samgathana Vibhaga library
Manuscripts
of great value in various languages such as Bengali, Oriya, Arabic,
Persian and Chinese lie scattered in various departmental libraries.
The manuscripts of Rabindranath and some members of the Tagore family
are preserved in the Rabindra-Bhavana Archives.