The Geological Sciences Library is regarded as the premier geoscience collection in the South, south of the U.S. Geological Survey Library in Reston, Virginia, and east of the University of Texas at Austin. It houses comprehensive collections in geology and related disciplines, with materials dating from the 1800s. The library holds more than 44,000 volumes of books and journals focusing on geophysics, geochemistry, petrology, structural geology, stratigraphy, sedimentology, economic geology, invertebrate paleontology, micropaleontology, and physical oceanography. The collection is particularly strong in coverage of the southeastern United States and the Appalachian Basin region, and the library also has an excellent collection in malacology.

The Geological Sciences Library is part of the University Library. It maintains close links with the Geological Sciences Department, also housed in Mitchell Hall, and supports their current areas of focus: geochemistry, paleobiology, paleoclimate, seismology, surface processes, and tectonics. While the library primarily serves the learning and research needs of the students and faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it also draws researchers from the Triangle region and the southeastern United States. The library is open to the public.

The library is equipped with the following:

The library no longer has a copy machine. Materials may be scanned in the library or checked out for photocopy at another location. Other nearby copy machines are located at the Health Sciences, Biology/Chemistry and Undergraduate libraries.