Library A Week

Lincoln Collections

2010 no. 48

Library Profile

Library Name: Lincoln Collections Location: 321 Main Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Type: Academic Website: http://www.library.illinois.edu/egx/ LTLS Directory Page: http://www.lincolntrail.info/zin.html Member Since: 1973  An interview with John Hoffman and Ryan Ross.

What is unique about your library?

The unit contains both manuscript and printed sources--both unpublished primary sources (manuscript collections), which by definition are unique, and published secondary works (printed collections), some of which are also unique. All of these materials acquire an added usefulness by being brought together in a single well-defined library.  The staff, having a detailed knowledge of the collections, endeavors to connect users to the particular sources that are relevant to their interests.

What are the primary goals and objectives of your library?

The University of Illinois Library's Illinois History and Lincoln Collections form a focused concentration of sources for Lincoln studies and for research into all aspects of the history of the state.  The Collections are used by a wide range of on-campus and off-campus constituencies.

What cooperative efforts are you currently doing?

The unit's collections, both for Illinois history and for Lincoln studies, are similar to the collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (now the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library) in Springfield.  Thus cooperative efforts of the unit mainly involve historians at that library. Administratively, the staff in Urbana, before it was connected to the University Library, was simply a unit of the Historical Library in Springfield.  Now formally separate, the staff remains in close contact with the Presidential Library's historians, three of whom were graduate assistants in the University Library's Illinois History and Lincoln Collections.

Tell us a story about your library.

During the decades when the Illinois history unit on campus was "the editorial office" of the Historical Library in Springfield, it prepared that library's multi-volume Collections, a series of source material for the study of Illinois history.  That series is commemorated on the bronze plaque that is now placed at the north door of the Library.  Although that plaque is likely to perplex most users of the Library who notice it, it points to the history of the Library's present-day Illinois history unit. The unit began in 1910 as the Illinois Historical Survey.  In 2001, the unit was merged with the Library's Lincoln Room, which Harlan Hoyt Horner and Henrietta Calhoun Horner (both graduates in the Class of 1901) created in 1951, by the gift of their Lincoln collection to the Library.

What is popular in your library?

Lincoln, of course.  In general, the unit's collection of Illinois county atlases is most often used.

How does your library use online tools to connect to your user?

Manuscript collections are the bedrock of historical research, but individually, by their nature, they are less often used than published materials such as county atlases.  The work of acquiring, organizing, and curating manuscript collections occupies the staff more than anything else. One aspect of this work is to post information about each collection on the unit's website.  By contrast, published materials are recorded in the Library's online catalog..

Request a visit to your library If you would like to set up a special date for us to visit your library contact LTLS Consultant Michelle Ralston Library of the Week is published by Lincoln Trail Libraries System, 1704 W. Interstate Dr., Champaign, IL 61822 217-352-0047  -   ltls@lincolntrail.info Executive Director: Jan Ison, Editorial and Design Team: Michelle Ralston and David Lottes