University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University Library

The University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the network of libraries, including both physical and virtual library spaces, which serves the University's students, faculty, and staff, as well as scholars and researchers worldwide. The University Library continues to evolve to serve the needs of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus.

The University Library came into being before the University with which it is affiliated, as the University board considered it essential that students and faculty would have books waiting to greet them when the University opened its doors. However, this earliest collection was very small and did not yet have its own library building. As a result, the University Library has moved as it has grown throughout its history, a trend that continues to this day. While its collections had previously resided elsewhere, Altgeld Hall (at the time known as Library Hall) was the first building built specifically to house a University Library. Today, Altgeld Hall is home to the University's Math Department; the University Library moved in the 1920s to what is now called the Main Library.

The earliest Library collection consisted of around one thousand items. The collection remained small for some time, and in the early 1900s the Library was smaller than those of other large public libraries, as well as private institutions such as the University of Chicago. This would, however, quickly change. The Library underwent a period of tremendous growth from the mid-1930s until 1940, becoming, in the process, the country's fifth-largest library. A strong library collection became increasingly important to the University's standing and to its retention of students, as well as to the implementation of a successful graduate school program at the University.

The Undergraduate Library (UGL) emerged in part from the surge in collections, deriving both from the influx of the shuttered University of Illinois at Galesburg's collection in 1949 and from the need to grant undergraduates free access to research materials. The Undergraduate Library building was constructed in 1969, built underground in order to maintain open spaces and leave unobstructed sun for the University's experimental cornfield. The Oak Street High Density Storage facility also grew out of the surge in collections. The facility, which opened in 2004, provides a "climate-controlled" environment for the integrity of the materials housed therein, and is kept around "50° Fahrenheit and 30% humidity."

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