Sponsored by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Libraries, the Library Lecture program featured speakers with national reputations in the library and information world. The lectures, on timely topics, were published by the University of Tennessee Libraries as occasional papers, usually in groups of three lectures.

This series has been published under several different names. Lectures 1-3, 1949-1950, were published in 1952 as Volume 55, No. 1 of The University of Tennessee Record. Lectures 4-6, 1952-1954, appeared in 1954 as Volume 30, Number 6 of The University of Tennessee Record, Extension Series. Lectures 7-36, 1955-1984, were published as the University of Tennessee Library Lecture Series.