Collections
Welcome to the City Planning and Landscape Architecture Collection located located in the Funk Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences Library (Funk ACES Library) at 200 ACES Library, Information and Alumni Center, MC-633, 1101 South Goodwin Avenue, Urbana 61801, (217) 333-2416.
The collection serves the departments of Urban & Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture, as well as the students and faculty in various disciplines and related campus libraries, such as economics (Business Information Services), geography and Geographic Information Systems (Map Library, Geology Virtual Library, GIS Specialist in Scholarly Commons), civil engineering (Grainger Engineering Library Information Center), political science (Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library), sociology (Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library), natural history (Prairie Research Institute Librarian), architecture (Architecture and Art Library), leisure studies (Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library), health studies (Biology Virtual Library, Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library), and environmental studies (all libraries!).
Considered one of the most interdisciplinary collections in the Library, the unit collects in the areas of land-use policy, environmental planning and law, waste management, low-cost community housing and community services, demographics, historic preservation, landscape design, ecology, third-world planning issues, local government, tourism, and many other facets of city planning and landscape architecture.
The collection is particularly well-known for its historical holdings. The landscape architecture component of the collection began with the founding of the University of Illinois in 1867; the city planning component began in 1913, when the country’s first professor of city planning, Charles M. Robinson, joined the faculty. A small City Planning and Landscape Architecture Library was located in Mumford Hall from 1924 until 2008, when the collection and services were merged with the Funk ACES Library.
Today, the collection contains more than 159,000 volumes, more than 20,000 of which can be found in the Funk ACES Library, and more than 100,000 of which can be found in the main bookstacks, Rare Book and Special Collections Library, or other campus libraries. The unit adds 800-900 new monographs annually. Approximately 200 current periodical titles are also in the collection. Non-print materials, such as slide sets and videocassettes, can be found in the Undergraduate Library Media Center.
Collection Summary
- The collection contains comprehensive city plans, professional reports, and unconventional materials dating back to the early 1900s from the United States and Europe. More modern items include information from Africa, Asia, and Australia as well.
- The reference collection contains core sources such as atlases, dictionaries and encyclopedias, bibliographies, periodical indexes and abstracts, statistical sources, legal sources, biographical sources, handbooks and aids to professional practice, and directories.
- The landscape architecture component includes an unusually strong collection of pre-1900 landscape books, pamphlets, and periodicals.
- The unit maintains an extensive vertical file containing planning reports and documents from city, county, state, and regional agencies as well as nursery catalogs.
- A current collection of dissertations and masters’ theses completed by students in the departments of Urban and Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture is maintained by the unit.
- Patrons have access to electronic resources, including full Internet access and specialized products on CD-ROM.
Facilities
The City Planning and Landscape Architecture collection is now located at the Isaac Funk Family Library (Funk Library or Funk ACES Library, for short). The Library is named after the Issac and Cassandra Funk family. Their extremely generous support helped to make the ACES Library what it is today. The current Funk ACES Library was officially opened in August 2001.
The library occupies the 2-5th floor of the ACES Library, Information, and Alumni Center (LIAC), an octagonal-shaped brick building. There is one photocopy machine available for public use on the 2nd floor on the north side next to the conference room. There is also a scanner available for public use in the CPLA Reference & Resource Center on the 2nd floor on the northwest side.
Throughout Funk ACES Library, computers are available at the circular kiosks. The square tables with four chairs around them are all internet ready. All you need to do is have a laptop and an ethernet cable and you are ready to get online. Wireless laptop access is available throughout Funk ACES Library.
The second floor of the ACES Library is the base of its operations. All the library offices are located here, as well as the Circulation Desk and the Reference Desk. The CPLA Reference & Resource Center lives on the northwest side. CPLA reference books are shelved here. Also there are two computers dedicated to a professional grade scanner with Adobe Acrobat Professional and Adobe Photoshop Elements software. Also, newly arrive CPLA books can be found on the southwest side in the New Books area. They are separate from ACES new books, which are in the same area. New issues of print journals are on the northeast side of the 2nd floor; they are bound into volumes at the end of the year and then placed with the main print collection.
The third floor of the ACES Library holds part of the main collection, including CPLA print books and bound journals. There are also several group study rooms available on this floor.
The fourth floor of the ACES Library hold the remaining portion of our main collection, including CPLA print books and bound journals. It also holds the compact shelving area, which has various materials.
The fifth floor of the ACES Library holds a large instructional laboratory. The ACES Library will from time to time have classes up in the laboratory. Simply click on one of the light blue colored areas to see a photograph of that area.
Electronic Materials
The CPLA collection has a large and growing collection of electronic books and journals that can be accessed through the Library Catalog, Online Journals and Databases, and our many literature databases.