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.