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The Baillieu Library was opened by Prime Minister Robert Menzies on 21 March 1959. In his speech at the opening, Menzies said:

A university exists for a variety of things, tuition, lecturing, reading, conversation, discussion and the broad sweep of social and athletic activities. All of these things must be added together if we are going to have a university that is to be a great place and perhaps of all these things, the one that is hardest to get, the hardest to achieve, is an adequate library, because buildings cost fabulous sums of money; books, indeed, cost fabulous sums of money.

In 1967, Menzies became the first honorary member of the Friends of the Baillieu Library. Since 1979, the Leigh Scott Room in the Baillieu Library has housed the bulk of the Robert Menzies Collection.