We're planning to have events this fall and spring, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Week of September 7th - co-hosting a talk with Dr. Bridget R. Cooks
• October: Small Press Fest
• Not yet scheduled: wikipedia edit-a-thon with Black Lunch Table
• Collaborate with student groups and cultural centers to create and disseminate a dis-orientation manual for orientation 2021
• Online film screenings

Library Hours

The current plan is that Ricker Library will remain closed to the public through the fall, with the exception of individual in-person appointments (more below).

Collections

Our priority is to bolster our online offerings while ensuring that we don’t miss anything important in print. We’re also looking to expand our international collecting, initially partnering with our African Studies Librarians, Latin American Studies Librarian, and South Asia Studies Librarian. If there’s a part of the world you’d really like us to focus on now, please let us know. 

Requests

Requests are made through the catalog, and still will be delivered to Main or Grainger. On the back end, we check to see if it’s available as an ebook, and direct you to that if available to minimize exposure. Otherwise, Main is working on implementing a pickup locker system and that should be in place very soon.

Reserves

It sounds like there will be NO print reserves for fall across the library. Therefore, if you are teaching, as soon as you are able, please let our reserves specialist Elisabeth Paulus (epaulus2@illinois.edu) know your needs so that we can purchase and/or scan materials for you. If we get many requests at once, that will definitely delay our ability to process them.

Images of Ricker items for Teaching

A lot of our instruction sessions have featured items in our vault and closed stacks collections and encouraged students to interact with the materials. We are investigating a photo setup to photograph materials so that they can be used for your classes – more soon, but if you know you would want to use this service please let me know. Even better if you know what you’d want to have photographed.

Public services, including Reference and Teaching

We continue to be available for consultation or inquiries, either by emailing rickerlibrary@library.illinois.edu or by scheduling an appointment. If you’re interested in an instruction session or research skills workshop we are happy to offer that service as well.

In-Person Appointments

We’re looking at how to provide in-person appointments at Ricker that follow safety protocols to protect both patron and staff member. Like everything else, more soon.