This round the world voyage was epochal but not much polar—it did visit the Kerguelen Islands in Jan. 1874 and experienced some polar conditions but not many. It never wintered, the best time for library use.
p. 8: For the use of the scientific staff, of which Professor Wyville Thomson was the director, there was built an ample and compact work-room…, and a well-stocked library of professional books in various languages. This library survived as the library of the “Challenger” office and is mentioned by Rudmose Brown in A Naturalist at the Poles as a place where William Speirs Bruce worked with John Murray (p. 21).