Toward Cooperative Collection Development in the Illinois Library and Information Network

Abstract

Under the Illinois Library System Act, the head librarians of the University of Illinois, Southern Illinois University, Chicago Public, and Illinois State Libraries, with the Chairman, Illinois State Library Advisory Committee, serve as the Research and Reference Center Committee. The R & R Committee's first duty in encouraging and in making available adequate library research and reference facilities for the residents of Illinois is “to develop long range acquisition policies to strengthen the existing collections and to avoid unnecessary duplication.” To this end, a subcommittee, broadly representative of the Illinois library community, was appointed late in 1975 with specific charge to identify unmet needs of the Illinois library and information network and to make recommendations to identify or to develop collections to meet these needs. The Subcommittee's report, accepted by the parent committee in February, 1977, follows. The R & R Committee directed that the report be distributed widely to library systems and to other appropriate groups in the state and that their consideration and response be aggressively sought, supported, and encouraged before the casting and adoption of the plan, the determination of priorities, and the implementation of the grand design. This plan is now before the Illinois library community for preview, with the anticipation that it will provoke the thought, reaction, and action vitally necessary to make it a vehicle for the continuance of the state's record of dynamic library development.