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 From the Million Volume Library…. …to the 14-million volume Library. While initially small (numbering only 1,500 volumes), the aspirations for the University Library were always great. As early as 1912, the University’s President – Edmund James – called for the university to build a collection of a million volumes as quickly as possible, knowing that the only way to build an excellent research university was to attract excellent faculty and that the Library was a key component of fulfilling his vision. This goal seemed almost laughable to some at the time. In December 1914, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign held fewer volumes than Oberlin or the west coast upstart, Berkeley. Although delayed by the First World War and the following economic upheaval, the building was eventually funded and built in the early 1920s. And, over the years, support for the collections and facilities to hold them have resulted in a rich collection that is a resource for both the state and the world. Now – Illinois ranks among the top ARL libraries in North American and is the largest public university library in the United States. In the area studies, its strongest holdings are in Slavic and East European and Latin American Studies. While materials were acquired from these areas as early as the 1900s, the bulk of the area studies acquisitions occurred in support of the developing area studies programs that were established as separate programs on our campus in the 1960s.

Building and Sharing a National Foreign Language Collection Foundations Disruptions Sputnik Competition From the beginnings, International and Area Studies Collections were established with intent to develop unique collections that could be shared with other institutions and scholars throughout the region and country. Over the years, this collection has become part of a larger coordinated network of natoinal foreign language collections. As early as 1918, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace began investing international and area studies in an attempt to foster mutual understanding and international peace. This was accomplished through support for new academic programs, faculty lines, research centers, and library collections that were intended to raise the consciousness of U.S. and world populations about the cultures, languages, and political systems of other countries From the 1930’s to the 1950’s, foundation funding for area studies continued to be the principal funding source for non-Western research programs with support coming from the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford foundations (Axelrod and Bigelow, 1962). At UIUC, early Carnegie funding helped to promote the status of Latin American studies through support for the travel and research of Professor David Kinley to Argentina on 1916. After becoming the President of the University of Illinois in 1920, Kinley oversaw the building of the Main Library, an institution viewed from that point forward as part of the University’s contribution to a worldwide network of knowledge production. Indeed, this self-assigned mandate was written in stone when carved above one of the entry portals at the front of the library building is the statement: “The Whole World Here Unlocks the Experience of the Past to the Builders of the Future.”   After World War Two, collections in international and area studies across the nation began to develop in a more coordinated fashion through the Farmington Plan. The Farmington Plan attempted to overcome disruptions in the book trade resulting from the war and tried to develop a national program to collect and make accessible materials from abroad (Wagner, 2002). Although the plan initially focused on Western European materials, it expanded to include publications from throughout the world. The Farmington Plan contributed to notions of a national collection of foreign language materials by requiring libraries to allocate funds toward acquisitions from chosen regions and subject areas and committing to making the books available nationally. By 1951, UIUC spent $4,400 in Farmington acquisitions, acquiring more Farmington books than any other library (Williams, 1952). By the late 1950’s, the Cold War – and the additional fears that accompanied the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 – provided further momentum toward Federal support of foreign language programs across the U.S. Through the lens of national security, the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 promoted library acquisitions for foreign language materials, resulting in dramatic increases in such acquisitions. In the early years of the NDEA, library expenditures accounted for 12-15% of the funding support. In one of the initial reviews of the NDEA, funding for non-Western language collections was touted as an important stimulus “in increasing the Nation’s library resources in fields where research libraries are rare” (Bigelow and Legters, 1964, p. 46). The 1960 NDEA funding included resources to directly support UIUC’s efforts to establish a Slavic section in the Library. By 1965, this federal support formed the basis for establishing the Far Eastern and South and West Asian Library  and expanded collections for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. In 1969, the program helped to establish UIUC’s African studies librarian position. As the NDEA moved from its Defense Education stance to the U.S. Department of Education as part of what is now called the Title VI National Resource Center program, libraries continued to be emphasized as critical components of a national program in area studies. A 1984 assessment of the Title VI program included a full chapter that focused on library and information resources. One of the main areas of emphasis in this report was resource sharing and cooperation. Noted are inadequate systems for sharing resources between academic and government institutions. National level efforts through foundations and the Federal government continue to develop and strengthen collections in non-Western languages that are less frequently taught and studied on U.S. campuses. These languages are now referred to as Less-Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) and essentially consist of all languages with the exception of English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. The Title VI program is still one of the primary federally funded programs that supports these library collections, supporting 125 National Resource Centers (NRC) that are focused on regional and international studies. Through their work with these NRCs, academic libraries have developed a vast national network of collections and services to support academic, corporate, and government enterprises. Although this network and funding program has existed for over fifty years, little research or evidence exists regarding the national impact of these foreign language collections as a collective resource for educational institutions, corporations, and intelligence services. One of the measures for success of these programs and their impact nationally is the level at which LCTL materials are shared across institutions and institutional types. This research is an attempt to measure the impacts of this collection at Illinois.

Evaluating the Impact LCTL Materials at Illinois Is the impact of these collections constrained by geographic proximity and/or consortial arrangements? Does a deeper, centrally held collection of Less Commonly Taught Language materials serve the broad academic community? Beyond the academic community, who else benefits from LCTL materials collections? How does this compare with academic usage? Can the breadth of usage justify the longstanding institutional and governmental financial commitments? How does a robust service component impact the usage of LCTL materials? In this study, the we examined the regional distribution for the outgoing materials, the types of institutions that were borrowing the materials and which languages were the most frequently borrowed with the goal of addressing the following five series of questions: Is the impact of these collections constrained by geographic proximity and/or consortial arrangements? Does a deeper, centrally held collection of Less Commonly Taught Language materials serve the broad academic community? Beyond the academic community, who else benefits from LCTL materials collections? How does this compare with academic usage? Can the breadth of usage justify the longstanding institutional and governmental financial commitments? How does a robust service component impact the usage of LCTL materials? Data needed to answer many of the research questions for this project were available from the UIUC’s Interlibrary Loan department.

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

Is impact constrained by geographic proximity and/or consortial arrangements? The data did support this supposition and showed that between 2007 and 2011 a little more than 50% of the total number of LCTL materials borrowed went to institutions within the Midwestern United States. Even when the researchers took Illinois out of the equation in order to eliminate the in-state bias created by I-Share, institutions in the Midwest borrowed nearly 40% of the total number of LCTL materials lent. The next highest borrower of LCTL materials was the South, which borrowed nearly 24% of the total number of LCTL materials lent. The North Eastern US borrowed nearly 20% and Western United States borrowed 17% of the LCTL language materials.

Regional Impact Revisited The regional data is more interesting when compared to the locations of other National foreign language collections as represented by NRCs. Each red dot on this map represents an NRC. And as you can see as compared to the Northeast and the West Coast, the Midwest (at least the more Western part of the Midwest) and the South, have relatively fewer NRC’s. The data shows that nearly 75% of our LCTL lending went to Midwestern and Southern States. Even without Illinois being counted, a little more than 65% of our LCTL lending went to the Midwest and the South. So one can infer that the LCTL materials being sent out to those regions are supporting scholars and institutions that otherwise don’t have the same level of funding to build up these collections locally. For example, North Dakota didn’t borrow much from Illlinois in 2011, but of what they did borrow 25% was LCTL materials which is just a little higher than the average from the last 5 years which ranged from 17-25% LCTL borrowing. Or in the case of Georgia and Kentucky, neither of which have NRC’s, 17% of their total borrowing was for LCTL materials. Given that the overall trend is that 10% of total lending is LCTL materials, these are striking percentages. There is also a certain amount of exchange that takes place between NRC libraries, which makes sense given the growing trend towards cooperative collecting and consortia arrangements.

Usage Beyond the Academic Community While the academic community accounts for 57.8% of the LCTL materials lent, because academic libraries borrow such a high volume of materials this still only accounted for 10.8% of the total materials borrowed by academic libraries. For many other types of institutions, while the volume of LCTL materials borrowed was relatively small, the impact was high. For example, the Federal Government only borrowed a little more than 300 items from UIUC in 2011, but of those transactions over 10% were LCTL materials. This proportion was relatively stable over the five year period from 2007-2011, resulting in an average of 8.2% of the materials borrowed by the Federal Government being LCTL materials. Given that many of the LCTL collections are funded in part of Federal Title VI  grants this indicates that the government is getting a direct, solid benefit and return on their investment. State and Municipal Governments also benefits from using the LCTL collections at UIUC; interestingly, the usage increased significantly over the years. While in 2007 only 3.5% of the materials borrowed were LCTL materials, by 2010, fully 17.1% of the materials borrowed by state and municipal governments were LCTL materials. In 2011, the percent of the overall lending to State and Municipal Governments comprised of LCTL materials reached 18.6%.   Other types of institutions that borrowed a relatively high proportion of LCTL materials included Associations and Foundations, which like the State and Municipal government showed an increase in the proportion of LCTL materials borrowed in more recent years. While in 2005 only 5% of materials borrowed were LCTL materials, by 2011, 15% of the materials lent to Associations and Foundations that year were LCTL materials. This is despite an overall decrease in the amount of overall lending.

Serving the Broader Community: Impact of Aggregated Slavic Holdings 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% Clearly, Illinois has an impact outside of its region, and the institutions that borrow from Illinois – Academic institutions; community colleges; and branches of government including offices covering local, state, and Federal needs – rely upon the collections built by research libraries to meet their needs. So, having built an excellent collection of Slavic resources, how does an institutions like Illinois connect users most effectively those resources? For that, I will turn the microphone over to my colleague Joe Lenkhart.

Slavic Reference Service: Connecting Researchers and Collections Since 1973 the Slavic Reference Service has worked closely with scholars and ILL service providers by locating research materials at North American and European institutions. As a federally funded service program (Title VI), the Slavic Reference Service supports research communities in higher academia, junior colleges, public agencies and private research centers, public libraries of all sizes, special libraries in medical, scientific, and industrial centers, and governmental libraries. The Slavic Reference Service also serves government agencies including the Departments of State, Interior, and Defense, the USDA, CIA and the EPA. For the last 40 years, the Slavic Reference Service has developed training methodologies and bibliographic resources for identifying materials in the Less Commonly Taught Languages of Eastern and Southern Europe, the Baltic, and Eurasia. Relying on a core set of service principles, which include dependability and accuracy, the Slavic Reference has narrowed the gap between a researcher and the information being sought. Due to the proliferation of duplicate records, transliteration issues, gaps in integrated catalogs, and service consolidations at research libraries, the Slavic Reference Service has expanded its North American service area by including researchers and institutions in the South and Western states. Moreover, with a generous ILL and collection usage policy, scholars have access to the entire collection of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies materials at UIUC.

COLLECTION HOLDINGS: LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS

A Service Model in Numbers The 40 year collaboration between the Slavic Reference Service and Interlibrary Loan Department has allowed the service to complete and fill 1, 014 interlibrary loan requests for October 1, 2011 – September 30, 2012 period. Based on the UIUC Library 2012 Annual Report, the SRS completed a total of 3, 665 information requests from patrons. In terms of subject and coverage area distribution, the Slavic Reference Service addresses general and specialized inquiries from students and seasoned scholars, regardless of institutional affiliation.

Bibliographic Resources and Training Methodologies The ability of Slavic Reference Service to provide this unique service and its various initiatives rests on the continued support received by the National Resource Centers and research libraries from Federal and State institutions. Moreover, the ability to access materials in the Less Commonly Taught Languages requires a dual approach: specialized reference services working with interlibrary loan service providers. In order for this dual approach to function and benefit the research communities, a strong collaborative collection development infrastructure is essential.