Departments, research centers, research labs, reading groups, and other formal and informal groups may establish a unit in IDEALS for your research and scholarship. 

1. To ensure that the type of material you would like to include in your unit meets the IDEALS criteria, review the:
   • Deposit Guidelines;
   • Collection Policy;
   • Unit Policy; and
   • FAQs
      
2. To start a new unit, email ideals@library.illinois.edu with the following information:
   • Basic information about the unit, including name, requesting organization/unit, and a brief description of the type of material to be included
   • Name of the unit liaison (the administrator for the unit)
   • If you would like IDEALS staff to set up the structure of the unit (in terms of child-units and collections), provide an outline of these
   • If you want specific individuals or a group to have permissions to deposit into collections or to manage child units and collections, please provide the NetIDs of those people (you can manage this task yourself as well). Please note that the IDEALS staff can also use Active Directory groups to do this.
   • Any other special arrangements that you need such as access restrictions.
      
3. IDEALS staff will get back to you within two business days.

If you are unsure about any of this information, please contact us at ideals@library.illinois.edu and we can set up a meeting to review the process.

The administrator of an existing unit can add new child-units and collections within existing units. See Structure of IDEALS for more information about child-units and collections. See Manage Units and Collections for instructions.