This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts (officially nicknamed UMass) is the five-campus public university system of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The system includes UMass Amherst, UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth, UMass Lowell, and the UMass Medical School. The UMass system was ranked 56th in the world in 2010 by the Times World University Rankings. UMass Amherst is the flagship and the largest of the UMass campuses, as well as the first established. Like many colleges and universities, Massachusetts Agricultural College (as it was originally called) the Amherst campus was founded as a land-grant college in 1863, receiving initial start-up funding as part of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act. It became Massachusetts State College in 1931, and University of Massachusetts in 1947. The library system is the largest state-supported library system in New England with over 6.1 million items. The campus has many architecturally distinctive buildings commissioned by the Commonwealth and designed by world-renowned architects.