The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) was founded in 1845 as one of a network of Government Schools of Design first recommended by the Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures in 1836. Design reform, spurred by increased trade competition from Europe, was central to the purpose of the institutions, andnfrom the outset design libraries were regarded as key assets in this reform programme. The tragic loss of the Mackintosh library at GSA to fire in May 2014 and the increased attention that this has focused on the library as both a design object and a pedagogical space provide the opportunity to interrogate these histories. Archival evidence from the first hundred years of the school reveals a library history that is intrinsically bound to both nineteenth-century arts education and the politics of design reform. It has also allowed the construction, for the first time, of an evidenced narrative of the GSA library as a central resource within the life of a typical nineteenth century school of design.