UC Libraries Forum 2025: Standing Up and Standing Out in Turbulent Times

As restrictive licensing, and privatization reshape our digital world, the library mission, to provide preservation and access to knowledge, has never been more urgent. In this keynote, Kyle K. Courtney will explore how the intertwined forces of copyright, licensing, and information control shape what we can know, and who gets to decide. Librarians must reclaim their role as defenders of access, privacy, and intellectual freedom, standing up for knowledge with courage, creativity, and conviction.

In times where turbulence is amplified, how do the archives we sustain, sustain us as keepers of history, culture, and memory? From family photos to library collections to seedbanks, how do these archives prepare us? Along with offering material resources and guidance for everyday thriving, how do the archives we grow require other(ed) ways of knowing such as storytelling, communal reflection, and ecological wisdom? Ways of knowing that can further support collective sustenance in these times? For this keynote talk, Dr. Naya turns to diverse ways of knowing to reflect on these questions - and to create space for pause. Grounded in Black ecologies, BIPOC feminisms, and the Mojave Desert where she lives, she interweaves testimonio or personal testimony about co-creating community archives with insights from desert plants who know much about surviving uncertainty. Throughout, participants will have opportunities to personally reflect on archive-inspired prompts and on their takeaways from the forum.

Participants may want to bring a journal or sketchbook to archive their prompt responses for themselves and their communities. While there will not be breakouts, there will be opportunities to share responses through Q&A and other means if participants choose.

Naya Jones, PhD (she/her/ella) (co)creates where Black ecologies, healing justice, and the arts meet. As a cultural worker and geographer, she brings almost 20 years as a cultural healing arts practitioner to academic research. Personal and collective ancestors inspire her as a Black and Blaxicana artist-scholar. For current research and ritual arts, she archives how Black earth-rooted spiritual traditions continue to be reimagined amid climate injustice. For collaborations, she co-supports Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-led and social justice initiatives as they archive ancestral ecologies and reimagine relationships with the earth. Her solo and collaborative work has been nationally recognized by Culture of Health Leaders (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), the American Association of Geographers, and the Wisconsin Arts Board (with Ms. Angela Smith), among others. A former professor, Naya holds a PhD in Geography and the Environment from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently a Research Affiliate with UT Austin and a Master's of Divinity student at Starr King School for the Ministry, where she is training to be a higher ed chaplain and deepening her "roots" in critical religious studies.

At the UC Libraries Forum 2025, “Standing Up & Standing Out: Libraries in Turbulent Times,” the UC Council of University Librarians (CoUL) will host and participate in a discussion panel moderated by UC San Diego AUL Roger Smith on Tuesday, October 21 from 10:45 am to 12:15 pm. CoUL members and Roger look forward to discussing approaches to and shared priorities for advancing collaborative library work, including during turbulent times.

Academic library workers are facing a test of our commitment to the core professional values with the alarming, widespread acts of U.S. government censorship and budgetary and legal attacks on higher education institutions and the national research infrastructure. This situation impacts the equitable exercise of intellectual freedom and freedom of expression in academic libraries, including the University of California Libraries, and in our campus and broader communities.

This critical conversation session will be an opportunity for UC library workers to discuss how to uphold our professional ethics and values as articulated by the American Library Association in the face of day to day challenges to research, publishing, teaching, and learning; the larger threats to scholarly inquiry, knowledge, and education; and questioning of efforts aimed at creating more inclusive, diverse, and equitable libraries and library related services.

As UC libraries weather shifting budgetary, social and political landscapes there are many questions we can ask about how to respond in this moment, using core library values as a pillar of strength:

What are the roles of academic libraries and library workers in protecting freedom of speech and intellectual freedom on individual campuses and across the UC system as a whole?

• How can we center intellectual freedom and freedom of speech in the face of change and challenges to universities and libraries?
• Where do the issues of privacy and intellectual freedom show up in day to day work? For example, what forms of censorship or research interference are faculty and students experiencing? What type of support have library workers been able to provide in these situations?
• What practical steps can academic libraries take to protect students’ ability to exercise intellectual freedom on UC campuses?
• Are there partners in the community, region, or parallel fields that we can turn to for mutual support and strength?
• How can we ensure that UC library leadership keeps the core values of our profession top of mind when facing difficult decisions about organizational changes and possible cuts?
• What actions can we take to resist the constraints being imposed on higher education communities?
• How can we ensure that libraries and universities are places of curiosity and inquiry that also recognize the value of equity, inclusion, and diversity of representation and thought?

Challenges have always surrounded OERs, today we are faced with even more challenges as we navigate a landscape of budget cuts, lack of grant opportunities, and attacks on DEIA. Amid this negative climate we are more than ever in a space to bring about something positive for our students in the UC system.

At UC Irvine, we recently completed a faculty incentive initiative to move course materials to open or library-licensed materials. We awarded three grants in as many years. However, in exploring this topic further we were able to see the vast work that the faculty are doing behind the scenes. More than half of the bookstore’s grid each quarter for the last fiscal year are courses with no required textbooks, and those noting their course uses open educational resources (OER) is slowly increasing.

We are interested in hearing how other UC campuses approach affordability efforts and library-licensed course materials, including:

• How does your campus prioritize affordable course materials?
• Do the course reserve notes in your catalog expire each term, or are they visible for students to view yearlong, aiding student decision-making when registering for courses?
• Do you detail low-cost courses outside of UC Library Search and if so, how?
• How do you work with the Learning Center at your campus to encourage OER or library licensed material for new or UC wide courses?
• Are libraries informed when faculty depend on journals or eBooks for course materials? How might we establish processes to ensure that these resources remain available despite budget cuts?
• How are libraries anticipating changes to affordability efforts within the climate of budget cuts?

Hospital mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have become increasingly common in academic medical centers, UC included. They are often driven by financial pressures, strategic realignment, and/or efforts to expand services. While much attention is paid to the operational and clinical ramifications of these changes, their impact on institutions’ libraries is often overlooked. Libraries are rarely included in early stage campus discussions about M&As, despite the long range effects these additions have on everything from licensing to service points to resource access.

This panel discussion will be facilitated by three librarians from UC campuses currently navigating the complexities of hospital M&As: San Francisco, San Diego, and Irvine. With backgrounds primarily in collection development, we will share how mergers have affected resource pricing, licensing negotiations, and collections scope at our respective campuses. We will then invite participants to share their own experiences to explore the broader implications M&As have on the UC Libraries, such as budget challenges, library staffing, evolving service models, communications, IT, and access for new user populations.

In addition to surfacing shared concerns and collective knowledge, we will strive to answer the question of how we can raise awareness among stakeholders of the importance of including the library in the early stages of M&A discussions. This panel discussion will explore strategies for advocacy, collaboration, and adaptability in the face of ongoing institutional change. The goal of this session is to bolster the UC Libraries so we can stand out as essential, resilient campus partners in a dynamic healthcare landscape.

As our library systems adapt to ever-growing volumes of data and new security vulnerabilities, several UC Library Development Teams are adopting DevOps (Development Operations) practices to meet these challenges. DevOps practices promise to enable teams to tackle problems at a “cloud” scale. The adoption of DevOps practices comes with a significant learning curve. The traditional roles of software developers and systems administrators are blurred in the process. How ready are our library development teams to adapt to these changes?

This panel will feature presenters from development teams at CDL, UCB, SCSB, UCSC and UCSD. Each of the represented teams are at different stages of adoption of DevOps practices. Each panelist will provide a brief introduction to the DevOps practices that their teams have in place as well as their teams plans and hopes for future adoption. Each panelist will describe the challenges they are encountering in implementing these practices. Lastly, each panelist will describe the learning process that their teams are undertaking as they adopt DevOps practices.