Promoting Use and Preserving Access: Navigating the Evolving Nature of Academic Media Collections

During the last 15 years, the collection development and management policies for media collections at the University Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign shifted from placing a strong emphasis on restricting access to media content and limiting use to faculty and classroom needs toward a more open philosophy that supports media needs across the curriculum while simultaneously promoting the use of media collections for personal growth and the enrichment of student life and culture. The University Library now actively encourages the use of media content in a variety of forms and media collections continue to grow in popularity. These changes in the use of media, as well as changes in available formats and forms of access, present the institution with significant collection development and preservation challenges for locally managed content that must be addressed to ensure the ongoing availability of these resources.