Fiscal pressures at academic and research libraries increasingly dictate new practices and cost justifications regarding library spending for collections. Space allocations for existing and future collections seems to be challenged by campus administrations as they perceive the digital environment as replacing the need for print and physical resources. Collecting and managing library resources for future research needs are being discounted as non-critical, replaced by a narrow focus on meeting current needs. Global initiatives promoting open access to new scholarship are often unfunded mandates, and challenge libraries to maintain current practices of blending new information outputs from a wider range of publishing options. This presentation will explore what kinds of long-term solutions for sustainable funding can protect and continue the important role of academic research libraries as they struggle with how to retain traditional yet critical functions of collection stewardship while expanding to embrace new expectations as the academic landscape shifts.

Perceptions that libraries are no longer retaining physical collections suggest that library staffing and the need for physical space can be reduced when in fact the transitions to more digital assets and maintenance require new and different staffing models, skill sets, and space for users and staff alike. The financial commitments shift to greater needs than expectations of reduction. The translation of this scenario explores how “Just in Case Collecting vs Just When Needed” is being addressed by libraries and how publishers and information providers are changing acquisitions and licensing models of their products in variable formats. The impact of greater subscription offers, packages, reliance on aggregators are all examples of this trend on a global scale. Academic leaders, faculty and librarians are continually exploring how best to handle open educational resources (OER) and respond to the changing role of the textbook, which has seen steep price increases.

Digital collections require additional attention and resources to handle web archiving, promote the digitization of legacy collections previous contained in microform or newsprint and other media, and offer challenges in incorporating born digital content released on a range of platforms utilizing multiple technologies. Academic libraries are taking the lead in responding to scholarly outputs or mandates and incorporating best practices in how to establish and utilize repositories, the open access movement and research data management. There are new opportunities for streaming media and multimedia while libraries learn to respond to format obsolescence and migration, which contribute to additional costs in collection management. The more complex processing issues of electronic resources have forced library reorganization efforts to consider how to achieve efficiencies in time on task, reduce costs, mainstream staff and get the product to the user when needed.

This presentation offers new ideas in how sustainable practices derived from management, logistics, and library practice can apply to new thinking about roles for collections in academic research libraries and address how libraries are exploring laudable new roles as publishers as well as stewards of previous generations of scholarship.

The University of California faculty Senate adopted an Open Access Policy to cover their research scholarly publications in July 2013, and solicited the California Digital Library (CDL) to help with the discovery and distribution of UC authored published articles. In support of the Open Access Policy, CDL and the Office of Scholarly Communications have partnered with the ten UC campuses to implement the Open Access Policy directives to make the scholarly articles widely available. The UC Open Access Policy timeline began with three pilot campuses (Irvine, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) to serve as early implementers. In 2013-2014, the faculty were asked to use a manual submission process to add their publications voluntarily or have work within their departments to have their publications added to eScholarship, the institutional repository for University of California. The second phase began in early 2015 with an automated system (UC Publications Management System) that collects publication citation metadata and provides assistance for uploading scholarly articles into eScholarship. This case study details the timeline for development of local campus communications at Irvine and San Diego, offers strategies for faculty outreach, demonstrates various marketing and advertising methods, and discusses the options for assessing the implementation of the UC Open Access Policy at the campus level.

Contextualization, understanding and active communication are the signs of relevant robust activity. In this case study approach to how the UC Irvine Libraries have executed campus involvement and engagement in promoting the participation levels of disseminating scholarly outputs, we have learned many things that can be defined as stemming from those arenas. Faculty are not inclined to do this independently, so we needed to create an organizational plan that would allow them a simple and direct way to submit their academic output, be it journal articles or other information products, to learn more about scholarly communication processes