Reimagining Reference and Permanent Reserve Collections:

For information professionals, the practice of organizing physical collections in defined locations is familiar, but for library patrons the practice can be more elusive and obscure. The Texas Tech Architecture Library branch has long maintained multiple shelving locations and designations for the physical collection as a basic premise of collection organization and presentation. These distinct locations afford opportunities for classification and communication, such as material type, access, and loan policies. This article concentrates on two physical collection locations—reference and reserve—and the project undertaken to assess and reimagine the collection content, physical locations, and presentation with the aim of encouraging patron self-exploration and resource discovery framed by the context of the undergraduate architecture core curriculum structure.