Following the approval of the Library/IT Fee in Spring 2007, the University Library made a commitment to using Fee monies to provide resources and services that directly support student needs for improved Library facilities, enhance information technology available for public use, and improve access to print and digital scholarly materials that students need to conduct their academic work. We are happy to present the Library/IT projects for 2008-09:
The Library/IT Fee continues to support 24/5 access during the academic year to the Undergraduate Library and the Grainger Engineering Library, which allowed almost 1,500,000 users to visit those libraries in 2008-09. The Library/IT Fee not only continues to make 24/5 service a reality, but has supported major improvements in the availability of electrical capacity in the Undergrad (and in the number of electrical outlets for our many visitors with laptops, cell phones, and other mobile devices). As the year concluded, plans were underway to further improve direct service to students at Undergrad through the construction of new service desks planned for installation in Fall 2009.
Public computing not only allows students to access digital content and to search Library databases, but is an essential component in helping students to complete all varieties of academic work. Thanks to the Library/IT Fee, we were able to replace over 100 public workstations in the Main and other campus libraries in 2008-2009, bringing faster computing power to publicly-accessible computing in the Library.
Our users have told us that they would like access to more content 24/7, and the University Library has been using funds from the Library/IT Fee to help meet that need. In addition to supporting ongoing subscriptions to electronic resources and other regular acquisitions, the University Library has aggressively acquired backfiles and new electronic resources to support the academic needs of students at UIUC. Thanks to Library/IT Fee monies, we have been able to purchase significant backfile content, e-reference tools, digitized historic newspapers, and other historic journal literature including: Brill New Pauly Online, Endocrine Society Legacy Archives, Entomological Society of Canada Backfiles, JSTOR Arts & Sciences VI, JSTOR British Pamphlet Collection, National Research Council of Canada Backfiles, Oxford University Press E-Journal Archives, Readex Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808 – 1980, Thomson Web of Science Backfile through 1955, and Wiley Blackwell Backfile.
American Environmental Photographs Collection, [AEP Image Number, e.g., AEP-MIN73], Department of Special Collections, University of Chicago Library.
Through Library/IT Fee support, the Library has been able to continue its involvement in the large-scale digitization projects that are shaping the future of digital access to popular materials, scholarly resources, and primary source materials, including those led by Google and the Open Content Alliance. Over 6,000 books were digitized from the Library collections during 2008-09, bringing the total number of volumes digitized, thanks to Fee funds, to over 17,000. In 2008-09, Illinois digital content made available through Illinois Harvest and the Open Content Alliance was accessed several million times. In addition, Fee support has allowed us to continue to prepare for the next phase of digital library development through our support of the Hathi Trust and our preparations to participate in the Google Book Search project.
The Library/IT Fee has provided critical support to the Library’s New Service Models program, through which we have provided new spaces for Library services as well as improved access to collections that have been difficult to locate. Fee support also has allowed the planning and implementation of improvements in service; In Fall 2009 the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections were relocated to a more accessible location on the third floor of the Main Library, and the Scholarly Commons, also on that floor, was launched. Fee support for New Service Models has also allowed us to plan for improvements that will come in Fall 2009, including the re-location of the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections to improved space on the third floor of the Main Library, and the launch of the Scholarly Commons, a next-generation service space aimed at supporting graduate students and other advanced scholars.
Few things distinguish the Illinois Experience like access to the rich and unique collections of rare books and primary source materials used by hundreds of students and scholars each year to conduct their work. These irreplaceable collections were threatened in Spring 2007 by a mold outbreak in the Main Stacks that had its origins in the outdated air-handling systems of our building. Thanks to the Library/IT Fee, the campus has been able to undertake a major upgrade to the air handling within our historic Stacks to improve air quality and ensure the security of our collections for generations of students to come .
University LibraryFor comments on this page contact: Scott Walter
Last modified by: Robert Slater on 10/23/09