Recent Work

Products of the University of California Systemwide Libraries, the documents collected here are of potential interest to audiences beyond the UC Libraries themselves. These documents are reflective of the leadership shown by the UC Libraries during a period of rapid growth and change impacting academic libraries as well as people and institutions they serve.

UC Libraries Shared Integrated Library System (SILS) Working Group: An Informal Oral History

(2021)

On December 10, 2021, the University of California Libraries Shared Integrated Library System (SILS) Working Group met for the last time. For three years, this group was responsible for leading the implementation of the University of California's first shared library system. This undertaking was a "moon shot" project involving hundreds of UC staff. Despite the complexity of the project and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the middle of it, the SILS was successfully launched on time (in July 2021) and within budget. This video, a recording of the SILS WG final meeting, constitutes an informal oral history of the SILS project.

1 supplemental video

Pay It Forward: Investigating a Sustainable Model of Open Access Article Processing Charges for Large North American Research Institutions [Final Report]

(2016)

Pay It Forward is a major study conducted by the University of California, Davis, and the California Digital Library, on behalf of the University of California Libraries, and with collaborating libraries at Harvard University, Ohio State University, and the University of British Columbia addressed the financial ramifications for the types of research institutions whose affiliated scholars generate a preponderance of the scholarly literature. The project focused on large, research-intensive universities in North America and defined sustainability as costing those institutions roughly no more than, and ideally considerably less than, current journal subscription costs for comparable journals today, with a rate of growth that will be possible for these institutions to support over time. The project sheds new light on the financial viability of the article processing charge business model to create open access at a much larger scale.