Did you know it's National Library Week? From April 10-16, libraries across the country are celebrating what makes them great places to study, learn and grow. Illinois' libraries, as well as its collections and services, are certainly no exception.
Whether you corraled yourself into a corner of Grainger to study or favored a spot in the Undergraduate Library, check out some of these highlights on the history of the library at Illinois, and its impact on the community:
The university library was founded in 1867 in the charter establishing the school that became the University of Illinois. The library, in fact, pre-dated the university.
The first library purchases at Illinois (an initial $1,000 investment in library materials) were approved at a meeting of the trustees of the “Illinois Industrial University” on Nov. 26, 1867, a measure meant to ensure that a core collection of “indispensable books” would be available to the faculty and students from the day they arrived on campus.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Dean Hugh Atkinson steered the library into automation and it became the first major research library in the country to have an online catalog. Today, more than a million people access this catalog every week.
The library is also world-famous for its collections, including personal papers of John Milton, Marcel Proust, H.G. Wells, Carl Sandburg and Avery Brundage of the international Olympic movement.
Illinois has 20+ area studies libraries with one of the larger engineering libraries in the country, a state-of-the-art agricultural library and a world-renowned rare book and manuscript library.
A few more facts:
13,699,413 total volumes held
7,851,225 electronic downloads
411,977 items circulated
106,598 reference questions answered
4,949,288 visitors
982,635 e-books
44,934,581 database searches
262,723 new items added
82,869 items loaned to other libraries via Interlibrary Loan
38,464 loanable technology requests fulfilled through the Undergraduate Library
408,911 books freely available in Google Books or HathiTrust
Want to learn more or share why the #ILLINOISlibrary is important to you? Follow the library on Facebook, Twitter @IllinoisLibrary and on Instagram @uillinoislibrary.
