Measuring and Sustaining the Impact of Less Commonly Taught Language Collections in a Research Library

To evaluate the current state of resource sharing and cooperative collection development, this paper examines the relationship between less commonly taught language collections (LCTL) and ILL services. The study examined multiple years of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s resource-sharing data. This paper provides a historical narrative for the multilingual collections, collection development strategies, reference services, and outreach initiatives that reinforce and strengthen scholarly communication and resource sharing among academic libraries. The paper concludes by examining the feasibility of aggregating, or concentrating, collections of difficult-to-acquire, low-use materials at institutions that can provide service at a regional and/or national level.