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

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?

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?