University of Illinois Library Special Collections Division
25 Year Future Vision
30 March 2004
The Special Collections Division and its constituent units collect, preserve and make accessible
all formats of rare, valuable, fragile, and otherwise special book, archival, and map
materials in accordance with the highest professional standards and with resources appropriate to
the task. We exercise stewardship over collections of world-wide significance to benefit
University of Illinois students, faculty, Illinois residents, as well as a national and
international body of researchers. As such, the Division supports the subject and format
specializations of other University of Illinois departmental libraries and
bibliographers.
- The Division will have the necessary staff expertise and sufficient infrastructure support to
provide professional curatorship of these research collections, use of technology, and
establishment of administrative and intellectual control over new incoming materials.
- The Division will have the infrastructure to deliver collection content both electronically and
in situ, and we will have the kind of space that permits not just storage and display of
the collections but active involvement with students and faculty through seminar rooms, comfortable
and secure study areas, and auditoria.
- We will have an appropriate architectural embodiment of a teaching, research, and curatorial
Center for Special Collections so that we can acquire, preserve, and ensure the accessibility of
extensive, world-renowned collections. The building should be a campus landmark both
architecturally but more importantly it should be at the University’s research and teaching
heart.
- We imagine being able to provide personalized access to comprehensive materials for faculty,
students, scholars, and an engaged public by bringing together the Library’s most significant
primary research collections. We will offer diverse and intensive research resources though a
single service location.
- The Division is interested in engaging undergraduate and graduate students in the use of
primary sources for their curricular work. We will be positioned to provide them access, both
actual and “virtual,” to a wide range of original source materials, including rare books, archival
records, manuscripts, musical materials, literary and personal papers, maps, prints, photographs,
and selected supporting artifacts.
- The large processing and access backlogs will be greatly reduced to make our rich collections
more findable and usable through new and diverse access mechanisms, and we will have achieved
effective control over the electronic records and electronically created materials pertinent to our
collections’ scope.
- We will deliver collection content digitally whenever possible in response to local and
off-site requests for reference or research in our special collections to the extent allowed by
technical and staff resources, physical condition of original items, and international intellectual
property limits.
- We will emphasize the use of collaborative relations (with other Library collection and
technical units, with other campus collections, with campus and university administrative offices)
to capture, manage, and make accessible collections and cultural resources in response to the
interdisciplinary instructional, research, and service needs of campus and external
constituencies. We will engage also in collaboration with international disciplinary centers
with long-standing, or quasi-entitled, interests in University of Illinois Library special
collections, and we will use collaboration to develop public programming to highlight our
collections.
- We will exercise an important role in contributing to the training, research, and professional
development of professionals in special collections librarianship and archival studies by linkages
with the UIUC GSLIS and educational programs at other institutions and agencies.
