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Newspaper Library's grand opening in new location set for Wednesday
Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor
(217) 333-2177; alynn1@illinois.edu
4/28/2003
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — After many decades of operating out of modest
quarters in a remote, cramped, low-ceilinged part of a basement, one
of the world’s largest libraries of its kind is moving up in the
world – into a large and totally remodeled space.
The grand opening of the Newspaper
Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will be
from 4 to 5 p.m. Wednesday (April 30) in the new location,
246 Library, 1408 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana. The event is free and open
to the public.
Tom Kacich, editorial page editor of the (Champaign-Urbana) News Gazette,
will discuss how the Newspaper Library helped him with research for
his book, "Hot Type: 150 Years of the News-Gazette." A bookbinding
exhibit, organized in conjunction with the event, is running now through
May 6 in the Library’s first floor east-west corridor.
Sharon Clark, the Newspaper Library’s head librarian, said the
new location will allow the staff to "provide better, more effective
access to our collection and offer faculty, students and visitors a
pleasant, high-tech space for their research."
The library was in serious need of space – both for papers and
patrons. Its bound volumes, microfilm reels and cards and current subscriptions
to more than 400 U.S. and international newspapers total more than 150
million newspaper pages dating from 1632.
According to Clark, the collection represents "a broad spectrum
of political and philosophical views," including at least one daily
paper from most major metropolitan areas of the United States, current
subscriptions to black and American Indian newspapers, undergraduate
college dailies, alternative and underground presses, religious titles
and political, labor, literary and special interest titles.
