The LIS Virtual Library: A case study of library support for an iSchool

impact has the iSchool movement had on the collections and service programs of the libraries at universities that are homes to iSchools? How are academic libraries meeting the information needs of iSchool faculty and students? At the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UI), the expansion of the curriculum and research agenda of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) to encompass the far-reaching perspectives of an interdisciplinary iSchool influenced the development of a new service model for library support. The library was also challenged to support GSLIS's very successful online MLIS and Certificate of Advanced Study degree programs. At the UI, a system of distributed, departmental libraries has been in place since the 19 th century. A separate Library & Information Science (LIS) Library was housed in the Main Library facility from the 1920s until May 2009, when its collections were merged into other libraries. The new model for LIS library services combines a more robust virtual presence with an intensified human presence in the GSLIS building. These changes are part of a much larger initiative to create a more flexible organizational structure for the University Library overall - a structure that recognizes the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of academic inquiry, the critical importance of digital information resources, and the opportunities for collaborative approaches to the provision of library services and collections using information technology. (1) Over the past decade, these themes have been echoed repeatedly in studies of library use, scholarly information- seeking, and the future of the academic library. (2) Recent writings have also affirmed the value of subject specialist librarians and library services targeted to communities of scholarship and practice. (3)