Measuring and Sustaining the National Impact of Multi-Lingual

Collections

Joe Lenkart, Thomas H. Teper, Mara Thacker, and Steven W. Witt

History of Collecting at Illinois

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From the Million Volume Library….

…to the 14-million volume Library.

Building and Sharing a National Foreign Language Collection

• Foundations• Disruptions• Sputnik• Competition

Evaluating the Impact LCTL Materials at Illinois

1. Is the impact of these collections constrained by geographic proximity and/or consortial arrangements?

2. Does a deeper, centrally held collection of Less Commonly Taught Language materials serve the broad academic community?

3. Beyond the academic community, who else benefits from LCTL materials collections? How does this compare with academic usage?

4. Can the breadth of usage justify the longstanding institutional and governmental financial commitments?

5. How does a robust service component impact the usage of LCTL materials?

Data SetTable 1: Record Fields Borrower Symbol

Borrower Full Name

Borrow State ILL Record Number

Title Author Date 1 Imprint

OCLC Number

Call Number Congress/ Other

Call Number/ Dewey

Call Number Medicine

Language CTL/LCTL/NA Region ISBN

ISSN Maximum Cost

Lending Charges

Article (Citation)

Date (Citation)

Numbers (Citation)

Pages (Citation)

Volume (Citation)

Dissertation Notes

Photocopy Flag

Received Before This Month

Received This Month

Series Notes Lender Received Date

Lender Filled Date

Lender Unfilled Date

Library Type Borrow Completed Date

• Time Frame: 2007-11• Total Loans: 195,492• Annual Average: 39,593

Is impact constrained by geographic proximity and/or consortial arrangements?

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Regional Impact Revisited

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Usage Beyond the Academic Community

Serving the Broader Community: Impact of Aggregated Slavic Holdings

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Total Loans % LCTL % Total Slavic

2007 44,812 10.18% 5.12%

2008 40,301 10.70% 5.19%

2009 39,038 10.92% 5.45%

2010 36,748 10.44% 4.98%

2011 34,593 10.22% 4.84%

Slavic Reference Service:Connecting Researchers and Collections

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COLLECTION HOLDINGS: LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS

A Service Model in Numbers

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Bibliographic Resources and Training Methodologies

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