Until 1897 the library of the Illinois experiment station and the university library were separately housed, cared for and supported. In that year the state erected a library building for the university and in it the experiment station deposited its collection of nearly five thousand titles. From that time the station ceased buying books from the Hatch fund, with the possible exception of a very few books for laboratory equipment, and it has never bought any from the Adams fund. The books deposited by the experiment station in the university library were classified and cataloged and became a part of the library. The only difference in treatment from books otherwise acquired was that the experiment station books were accessioned separately so that it would be possible to take them out of the library again if desired. All books and periodicals bought or exchanged for the experiment station since 1897 have been dealt with like those bought or exchanged for the university. The questions of administration come therefore for the most part under the general library policy.
Books are purchased for the university either out of the legislative appropriation for the library or the appropriations for the university and its different colleges and departments of investigation.
1. Library funds.
The library funds are assigned to the various departments in the colleges of the university by a committee on the apportionment of library funds, consisting of the president, the librarian and the deans of the colleges, who act on the recommendations of a senate library committee. This is composed of the president and the librarian and seven members representing the following interests; Agriculture, Engineering, Science, Graduate school, Library, The languages, literature and arts, and The philosophical and social sciences. Besides preparing for the first mentioned committee on apportionment, detailed estimates of the library needs of the various colleges, schools and departments, the library committee acts as an advisory board to the librarian in matters of library administration and policy. The college of agriculture, which in Illinois is of course intimately connected with the agricultural experiment station, receives its share of the library funds for the purchase of books selected by its professors and investigators.
2. Maintenance Funds, called Equipment funds in the Library to distinguish from Library funds.
Books are also purchased out of the legislative appropriations for the support of certain colleges and out of allotments made by the trustees from the general university funds for colleges not specifically provided for by the legislature. In the case of agricultural books these funds have the two purposes: the maintenance fund for the college of agriculture and the experiment station and, second, the appropriations for special departments of investigation in the experiment station.
The general policy of the faculty of the college of agriculture (or the staff of the experiment station) as to purchase of books out of these two different funds for college and experiment station is to buy books for special investigations out of station funds unless they clearly would be of use also to the students and instructors of the college at large. Books needed by the special investigator and the college in general at the same time are duplicated. When books are no longer needed in the laboratory or office for the special work for which they were bought, they are returned for general circulation to the main library by whose staff they were ordered and cataloged. Books already in the library, whether bought out of library funds or equipment funds for any college may be sent to a laboratory, office, or reading room from the main library unless they are needed for reference or class use in the main library or any branch of it.
Exchange.
The library and experiment station also work together in the matter of exchanges. The library exchange assistant arranges for the exchange of experiment station publications the same as for other publications of the university, while the station attends to the actual mailing of its publications, as it has better facilities for this than the library. In this way the library receives from the exchange of the agricultural experiment station publications alone between four and five hundred publications, of which more than one-half are from foreign countries, seventy agricultural periodicals and the publications of ninety learned societies being obtained in addition to the publications of state universities and stations and universities and libraries all over the world. Besides these, the library receives by the exchange of other University of Illinois publications many hundred more publications, some of which are of interest to agricultural scientists and economists.
Advantages of the Consolidation of Station and University Libraries