Success Stories
The University of California has built 10 campus libraries of distinction, comprising world-class collections that give a competitive edge to UC research and instruction.
At UC, faculty, students, and staff have access to nearly all of the 32 million items that make up the libraries' collective holdings; that is, to the largest university research library in the world. To search their collective holdings, use the UC libraries' Melvyl® Catalog.
The campus libraries provide high-quality, personalized services to faculty, students, staff, and people in their local communities.
See sections below:
For an in-depth view, plus information about current challenges, see the paper on new models of library service: deep resource sharing and collaboration at the University of California. [PDF]
History of Systemwide Planning
A formal, comprehensive planning process for the UC libraries began in 1976, triggered by duplication among campus collections, competition among campuses to increase collection size, and concerns about the cost of housing growing collections.
In response, the University made strategic use of emerging technologies (such as an online union catalog, and automation of circulation and cataloging operations), and a shared physical infrastructure (two regional library facilities) in order to maintain and improve services while containing costs.
Faced with reduced funding, the UC libraries launched the Library Planning and Action Initiative (LPAI) in 1996. Recognizing a problem with hyper-inflation in the cost and rate of scholarly publishing, the LPAI recommended the establishment of the California Digital Library to create a shared digital collection and to support alternative models for scholarly publications.
Successes of Systemwide Planning
A Universitywide, strategic approach to the development of library collections and services has emphasized multi-campus collaboration, the application of new technology, and expanded Universitywide sharing of the information resources within the UC library collections.
These strategies have been successfully combined with UC's leverage as to a multi-campus system of distinguished institutions to maintain high-quality collections and services in the face of rising costs and other challenges.
Systemwide planning has resulted in:
- Expedited intercampus lending.
- A shared online library catalog.
- Shared facilities:
- Two regional storage facilities.
- A digital preservation repository.
- Shared digital collections via the CDL:
- Licensed commercial content.
- Digital versions of UC-owned content.
Benefits of Library Collaboration
By sharing some common costs, the campus libraries are better able to serve local research, curriculum, social, and civic needs.
Shared facilities: Current holdings at the Northern Regional Library Facility (NRLF) in Richmond and the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF) at UCLA total about 10 million volumes. By sharing facilities, libraries are able to economically accommodate low-use print materials and thus devote a greater portion of their local shelving space to new, current, and high-use ones. In addition, a shared preservation repository is being built to store and manage digital information for the long term.
Integrated services: The Melvyl Catalog serves as the main access point to the collective UC library materials, integrating the holdings information of the UC libraries as if they were part of a single collection. Other services include Request, which streamlines interlibrary loans, and UC-eLinks, which enables libraries to link from a citation to the full text of an item.
Shared licensed collections: The UC libraries act as a single entity in developing a shared collection of licensed digital materials, which significantly reduces the license cost and administrative overhead. The shared collection enables the UC libraries to provide persistent access to electronic journal titles and database holdings, and also allows a reduction in print holdings where electronic equivalents exist.
Digital collections: The UC libraries collaborate in the development of online collections by digitally reformatting local print and other analog holdings. By adhering to standards and supplying a range of enabling services (such as brokering or subsidizing data and metadata creation, supplying data creation tools, and offering aggregation and portal services), the UC libraries continue to lower the cost of developing collections such as the Online Archive of California (OAC), Counting California, and a publicly-accessible site at www.californiadigitallibrary.org.
Scholarly communication: Through the UC's eScholarship program, the UC libraries provide leadership that facilitates innovation in scholarly communication. The program includes disciplinary-based archives of working papers and research results, support tools for submission, expanded peer review and access, and new scholarly products, such as working papers series and peer-reviewed digital journals.
Applied research and expertise: Through their collaborative efforts, the UC libraries have developed numerous methods and applications that have gone on to become industry standards, including Z39.50, UC-eLinks, Encoded Archival Descriptions (EAD), the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI), and the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Scheme (METS).
Looking Ahead
The UC libraries are facing many challenges, including huge annual increases in the volume of scholarly publications and their escalating costs.
To address these challenges, the UC libraries are engaged in an ongoing strategic planning process. Current directions for strategic development include expanded collaboration in collection management and coordination, a shared infrastructure to support the development of libraries services and shared facilities programs, continued expansion of UC’s scholarly communication initiatives, and increased attention on ensuring persistent access to digital resources. These strategies are further elaborated in the Strategic Directions planning report released in June 2004.
The UC libraries continue to be committed to cross-campus collaboration, coordinated investment in enabling technology, and a shared approach to the development and delivery of selected collections. This commitment, and the campuses' very substantial and persistent investment in their libraries, is perhaps the UC libraries' greatest and most important achievement.
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