Library remains the pride and joy of UI campus

Collinsville is home to the world's largest catsup bottle.

Peoria has the world's largest scale model of the solar system.

Champaign's claim to fame?

The University of Illinois Library is the largest public university library in the world, the third-largest academic library in North America and the fourth-largest research library in the country – not to mention the largest repository of books under one roof in North America.

Size in America is always a big thing, said Bob Burger, UI associate university librarian for services.

And the UI library, as students will realize as they wander through the stacks of the main library off Gregory Avenue, is big.

The library has everything from medieval texts written by monks and letters written by Abraham Lincoln to current bestsellers like "The South Beach Diet."

Carl Sandburg? Check. H.G. Wells? Check. Marcel Proust? Check.

A report on the First International School on Laser Surface Microprocessing from 1989 in Tashkent, U.S.S.R.? Check.

All told, the facility features more than 10 million volumes and 22 million items and materials, such as maps, films and audio recordings.

First, an orientation. There's the main library in central campus, which dates back to the 1920s. Then you have the more modern Grainger Engineering library on Springfield Avenue. On the southern end of campus is the College of Environmental Sciences library. The undergraduate library is the one underground. It's just east of the main library on the south end of the Quad and was built below the surface to avoid putting shadows on the Morrow Plots, the oldest continuous agricultural research field in the U.S.

There are also dozens of other libraries: the Geology Library, the Latin American and Caribbean Library, the Labor and Industrial Relations Library as well as the Slavic and East European Library. Some are within the main facility; some are within the departmental buildings.

The main library contains 5.5 million books and is the largest repository of books under one roof in North America. It's full.

Because it was too expensive to build an addition, the UI built what's called a high-density shelving facility south of central campus on Oak Street near the Abbott Power Plant.

That building contains about 1 million books and counting. These are books that hadn't circulated in about 20 years. (Those books are not off limits, though. If you want a book there, simply request it by calling the library or requesting it online.)

The UI library keeps getting bigger. It acquires an average of 170,000 volumes (which includes books and bound volumes of printed journals) every year.

Although it has held onto its claim to fame for decades, a few libraries – primarily the University of Toronto – are catching up.

Toronto, Burger said, is within striking distance of 100,000 volumes of the UI's count.

If one day another university outpaces the UI, bricks will not start to crumble.

"Even if Toronto overtakes us, we'll still be a marvelous, rich resource," Burger said. "The whole size thing was much more important until about 10 years ago. What seems more important now is access to the collections."

What's the point of having vast amounts of books if a person can't access them or if access is difficult?

Part of what the UI library prides itself on is access, having the materials that a researcher, student or professor needs.

To do that, the UI cooperates with many other libraries, meaning students and faculty can borrow a book from many, many other collections.

Students or faculty also can e-mail themselves the entire text of an academic article after accessing the library's online catalog. Students studying abroad can request the library scan a chapter or a few pages of one of the library's books and send the document electronically.

Plus, anyone – that's right, anyone – can access the UI Library's online catalog.

As far as changes planned for upcoming years, the UI Board of Trustees earlier this year approved several million dollars worth of repair and maintenance projects for the main library, including updating the fire suppression system and the heating and air conditioning system.

"The big problem with the stacks now is the physical storage environment. It's horrible for books," Burger said.

For example, some areas are not air-conditioned and humidity is not a good thing for preserving books.

In addition to work on the main library, the undergraduate library is being transformed into the Learning Commons.

The building, which opened in 1970, had been showing quite a bit of wear and tear (take note of the lounge chairs).

But the renovation project is more than about bringing in new furniture. The whole library will be updated.

Instead of one big room with rows of tables or individual study carrels, there will be different work spaces, some conducive to group or individual work. And instead of checking out an audiotape of a speech or lecture, students would download a digital version.

Students could borrow laptops, video recorders and other equipment to use in the library.