INDEPENDENT OFFICE COLLECTIONS AND THE EVOLVING ROLE OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANS

Recent collaboration between librarians and teaching faculty at the Un iversity of Illinois at Chicago aided in the identification of a new t ype of library on campus. This so-called hybrid office library is simi lar to a personal collection in the type and arrangement of materials acquired, and it is like a branch library in that the materials are co llected and used by a number of persons working in the same field. Unt il now, librarians have not been concerned with providing access to fa culty-owned collections. But changing information requirements of the faculty, new technologies available to them, and financial constraints on the university require that librarians take on a new role: helping faculty organize their independent office collections and encouraging them to make their materials available to a broader constituency.