GOING VIRTUAL: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR GEOLOGY LIBRARIES AND USERS

At the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, a new School of Earth, Society and Environment is being formed. The school will incorporate the departments of Atmospheric Sciences, Geography, and Geology. The new school needs the space that the Geology Library currently occupies. There is no other space available for most of the print material other than the remote shelving facility. The availability of off-site storage space for print material, electronic journals and books, and a digital repository provide opportunities for a new “virtual” geology library model, however, numerous challenges also exist. This talk will examine many of the opportunities and challenges, and well as some of the planning necessary to move toward the new model.