The Phillips Exeter Academy Library in Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S. , with 160,000 volumes on nine levels and a shelf capacity of 250,000 volumes, is the largest secondary school library in the world. It is part of the Phillips Exeter Academy, an independent boarding school. When it became clear in the 1950s that the library had outgrown its existing building, the school initially hired an architect who proposed a traditional design for the new building.