Building Research Collections in the Area Studies to Serve Nation-wide Populations

Teper, Thomas H.; Witt, Steven W.; Thacker, Mara; Lenkart, Joe

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/54531 Copy

Description

Title

Building Research Collections in the Area Studies to Serve Nation-wide Populations

Author(s)

• Teper, Thomas H.
• Witt, Steven W.
• Thacker, Mara
• Lenkart, Joe

Issue Date

2014-05-18

Keyword(s)

• Cooperative Collection Development
• Libraries
• Area Studies

Abstract

At the start of the 20th Century, President Edmund James set forth a vision of a million-volume library at the University of Illinois, a library that would attract pre-eminent scholars to the American prairie. One-hundred years later, the institution’s collection numbers over 15-million volumes and has grown with a service program to be a vibrant and robust set of operations that serve local and international scholars through a robust program of resource sharing. In order to examine the state of resource sharing and cooperative collection development, the authors evaluated the relationship between area studies collections and ILL services by conducting a quantitative analysis of ILL transactions for materials in less commonly taught languages (as identified by the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages: http://www.ncolctl.org/) . The study examined multiple years of UIUC’s resource sharing and collection usage data. The resulting presentation provides a historical narrative for area studies collections, collection development strategies, and the reference and outreach initiatives that reinforce and strengthen scholarly communications in resource sharing among academic libraries. The presentation will also address both the importance of maintaining area studies collections and the opportunities for research libraries to more systematically cooperate in meeting scholarly needs.

Type of Resource

other

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/54531

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