Service Policy
The Library’s primary goal is to provide quality services and resources for the support of our diverse community of users.
These services and resources are designed to facilitate academic success, research productivity, delivery of health care, and the efficient operation of the campus.
As a state-supported institution, we also offer services to community users not affiliated with UIC, with emphasis on promoting the use of collections unique to UIC. Members of the public are not offered remote access to e-resources or interlibrary loan services.
Access
Library services must be broad, inclusive, and accessible. Our hope is that every student feels welcome and that resources and the technology to make the best use of them are provided to ensure an optimal academic outcome. The Library strives to alleviate challenges that students may have in obtaining needed materials, whether through loanable textbooks and required readings, technology, media, and more.
Locations & Learning Spaces
The UIC Library is one library, but we can be found in locations across campus and across Illinois. All locations welcome our diverse community of scholars, faculty, clinicians, and community members. From the East campus Richard J. Daley Library and West campus Library of the Health Sciences in Chicago, to our three Library of the Health Sciences locations in Peoria, Rockford, and Urbana, we provide spaces designed for study, research, and learning. In Urbana, we share that space with our health science colleagues in the Grainger Engineering Library Information Center.
Library facilities foster the collaborative nature of study, research, and learning, while also addressing the need for quiet or silent space in which to do independent work. Appropriately designated, safe, comfortable, well-lighted, and clean spaces can promote effective use of the library’s resources and lead to greater student success. Hours of access, circulation policies, and other rules are intended to meet the needs of the UIC community.
Research Services & Consultations
Research services are intended to provide personalized instruction and assistance for answering specific questions, getting started on assignments, understanding and navigating the range of resources available, and locating materials to support coursework, research, clinical care queries and civic engagement.
Librarians can provide in person consultations, serve as partners in the research process and assist individuals navigating various phases of the scholarly communication lifecycle.
Consultations are not limited to a single session and address a wide range of needs including the development of reliable data management policy, addressing copyright and fair use issues, building project specific systematic discovery strategies or enhancing curriculum design.
All students, faculty and clinicians are strongly encouraged to meet with their subject liaison librarian, who is assigned to a specific department or college to assist with discovery and building research skills for classroom projects, advanced research, and papers or presentations. Subject librarians are available to meet in person, by phone, or in an online meeting space.
Resources & Collections
The Library provides resources in a variety of formats to support the research, teaching, learning, and patient care goals of the UIC community. (See Library facts.) Most of the collection is electronic and can be accessed from anywhere with UIC credentials. Through resource sharing agreements, the UIC community also has access to collections from other libraries, most notably through I-Share. We welcome recommendations for items to add to the collection.
Focused Instruction
Library instruction programs are designed to orient students to the best use of library collections and services both in-person and online. Instruction may be offered as part of coursework in an academic subject or interdisciplinary program, in a separate course on research skills and information literacy, in workshops, in research clinics, and through research aids, point of care databases and other tools that support knowledge services in the library.
Staff
Library staff consist of faculty librarians, paraprofessional staff, and highly-trained graduate and undergraduate student library assistants. Staff have diverse backgrounds, excellent communication skills, and expertise to meet the needs of students, faculty and clinicians. All library users should expect to be treated with empathy and respect.
The Library welcomes feedback and works to ensure a dynamic and open dialogue with the UIC community.