Where
do students descend physically to elevate themselves academically?
Every Illinois undergraduate knows the answer: at the Undergraduate
Library!
In 1969, the Undergraduate Library was built underground to avoid
shading the Morrow Plots, the country’s oldest experimental
agricultural fields. It currently serves as the cornerstone of the
undergraduate academic experience. The collection contains more
than 250,000 volumes and 60 computer workstations, including a computer
lab and multimedia classroom. It is connected to the Main Library
by an underground tunnel.
Library resources on campus are among the world’s finest.
With more than 40 departmental units,
the University Library is the third largest academic library in the country (surpassed only
by Harvard and Yale) and the largest public university library in
the world. It contains more than 10 million volumes, a milestone
unequaled by any other public university library, and its holdings
total more than 23 million items.
The collections are strong throughout all academic disciplines
and renowned for the depth and breadth of information they provide.
They contain numerous special collections,
including materials about and by Abraham Lincoln, Carl Sandburg, William Shakespeare, and
H.G. Wells. The Library also offers specialized services and programs,
including those of the Mortenson Center for
International Library Programs, which has provided innovative professional development
for librarians in more than 75 countries.
The Library’s materials are actively used, with more than
one million items circulated annually and many more used on site.
Its online catalog
provides worldwide access to materials through the Internet, and millions of users log in
each year. The Library offers many of the latest electronic resources that provide access
to materials at the University of Illinois and other institutions,
and it is one of the first academic libraries to offer a real-time
online reference service, “Ask A Librarian.”
For more information, see
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