Corralling Archival Resources

Coming Soon: A New Archives and Special Collections Building | Part Two of Three | Impact on Research

Co-location in new building will ease research endeavors

Different locations. Different hours. Different search systems. Different internal policies. Different materials on the same topic.

When the new Archives and Special Collections Building opens in the fall of 2027, all of the above factors will resolve by bringing three research units into a single site.

“It’ll be a smoother process for doing research in one place,” said Bethany Anderson, the natural and applied sciences archivist who works in University Archives. “You don’t have to go and travel [around campus] and figure out different hours for a different repository which . . .  might have different policies for accessing materials.”

As she summed it up: “More streamlined.”

Streamlining the engine of research on a campus as massive and diverse as the University of Illinois is within the Library’s reach. The reconfigured space of the former Undergraduate Library, located just south of the Main Quad and across the sidewalk from the Main Library, will house three significant units: the University Archives, including the Student Life and Culture Archives (SLC Archives) and the American Library Association Archives (ALA Archives); the Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML); and the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections (IHLC).

At present, the Archives, RBML, and IHLC reside on two different floors of the Library, while SLC Archives is a 30-minute walk away. As researchers, librarians, and archivists team up to tackle questions, “right now we have to play ping-pong with the patron,” said Caroline Szylowicz, the Kolb-Proust librarian and curator of rare books and manuscripts at RBML. That ping-ponging may involve uncovering which materials are available, where they are located, and the Library staff members who would best serve the situation.

Sometimes, that’s easier said than done.

Improved coordination

One issue in grasping what material is out there is the way archival resources are distributed across the Illinois campus. Broadly speaking, papers go to Archives, books and literary manuscripts to RBML, and relevant artifacts (such as club posters and Homecoming buttons) to SLC Archives.

Imagine a professor wants students to study the work of Joseph T. Tykociner, HON ’65, the Illinois electrical engineering professor credited with developing sound on film. As things currently stand, the first stop would be the Archives, where the renowned scientist’s research papers reside. Then, if the class wants to examine his book collection, the next stop would be RBML.

But in the new setting, “we could do an instruction session where RBML and University Archives team up . . . and talk about both those things together,” Anderson said.

While the units will remain separate in the new building, “having everything all together [in one location] is going to be really helpful and productive for students,” Anderson said, “because they can access things all at once rather than have to go to different repositories.”

Not to mention, added Krista Gray, IHLC’s archives program officer, that “physically . . . we will have a lot more space” to examine these items.

Space to spread out is always welcome, perhaps no more so than during the annual visit by steelworkers, who come to campus to study the labor movement. University Archives holds historical documents from the Steelworkers Summer Institute, RBML offers materials from a former labor organizer turned English professor, while IHLC has labor histories related to the state of Illinois. Meetings have taken place in the roomier Archives and RBML, as “it’s hard to fit 50 steelworkers in [IHLC’s one-room public] space,” Szylowicz said.

Relocation of resources

“Relocation of materials will definitely make life easier,” said Szylowicz, not only for students and staff but also for faculty conducting their own research.

“My work often requires moving among rare books, manuscripts, archival materials, and regional historical collections to trace connections across texts, people, and institutions,” said professor Ryan Shosted, who teaches linguistics at Illinois. “Bringing these units together will make it easier to discover relationships among collections, consult materials from multiple repositories during a single visit, and benefit from the complementary expertise of staff across units.

“The result will be a more efficient and intellectually integrated research experience.”

Kevin Hamilton agrees. The associate vice chancellor for research and innovation—humanities, arts, and related fields, he views the campus’s special collections as “an enormous asset to our mission at Illinois.”

“The new consolidated facility also stands to improve an already outstanding experience in ways I am eager and excited to see,” Hamilton said. “Those improvements certainly lie in the area of usability for the individual researcher for whom distinctions between objects held at RBML, the University Archives, and Illinois History and Lincoln Collections are not always intuitive.

“I’m really looking forward to how the very meaning of those objects—their interpretation— stands to benefit from their ability to be seen in new proximities to other objects.”

Co-location of colleagues

Co-location of librarians and archivists from the various archival and special collections units will serve as a benefit.

At the new building’s reference desk, “we’re going to be getting questions that are general enough that aren’t going to always necessarily be specific to our own areas,” Anderson said. “So that will inspire us to get to know each other’s holdings a little better.”

In addition, being in close proximity may engender dialogue that exposes gaps in the university’s special collections. By better understanding what each unit contains, “we’ll be able to . . .  supplement each other,” Anderson said.

Housing those units under the same roof lends a broader lesson as well. “If all the repositories are together,” Gray said, “it helps [researchers] get a better sense of the diverse repositories that are available in the world, rather than just focusing on” the university’s collections. “They start thinking about . . . being able to contextualize the broader archival landscape in terms of what is being preserved.”

The combined location may also alter the way Library staff think of their own collections. “In the new building, we’re going to be thinking of provenance in a different way,” Anderson said. “Researchers access materials not necessarily by provenance [as archivists do], but they’re looking across collections.”

Shosted agrees. “For researchers working across literary, historical, linguistic, and cultural collections, the ability to move easily among these resources will significantly improve both the efficiency and the quality of research,” he said.

That movement among resources will be made easier by an upgraded database. “Right now we have four separate databases for archival holdings,” said Gray, who is playing a key role in the migration. By early 2027, an integrated archival discovery system will launch, combining the records of the University Archives, RBML, IHLC, and the ALA Archives.

Every day Library faculty and staff face a kaleidoscope of questions on topics ranging from animal husbandry to cybernetics. “We have a rule,” Szylowicz said. “We don’t let a patron walk out the door without at least trying to find some answers or at least making sure you can figure out who their best contact would be.”

And while that has always been the guiding principle of librarianship at Illinois, the new Archives and Special Collections Building will make fulfilling that principle so very much easier.