Individually and collectively, the University of California libraries provide access to the world’s knowledge for the UC campuses and the communities they serve. In so doing, they directly support UC’s missions of teaching, research, and public service. The latest UC Undergraduate Experience Survey showed that 91% of undergraduate students believed that having access to a world-class library was “essential,” “important,” “very important,” or “somewhat important.” The intellectual capital of UC libraries – their acclaimed research collections, innovative services, user-friendly facilities, and highly trained staff – constitute an unparalleled resource that must be thoughtfully cultivated in order to ensure its continued support for students, scholars, and Californians. In an increasingly knowledge-based society, the
University’s role in facilitating access to information in all its forms takes on broader significance and value. Over the last decade, rapid advances in the development and use of new technologies to create, publish, store, search for, and deliver information have begun to transform libraries, allowing campuses to provide access to information without having to physically possess and store it. UC’s growing digital information services and collections are becoming more extensive and readily accessible to not only the scholarly community, but also all California residents. As the digital transition continues, the importance of the library as a rich scholarly environment becomes even more vital. Campus libraries provide crucial intellectual and social hubs for individual research and study, collaborative work, teaching and learning, and cultural events and exhibits. Scholars rely on the local rare and special collections, while students value the hands-on expertise
Display IX-1: 2012-13 Library Expenditures by Fund Source
About three-quarters of the libraries’ budget are derived from core funds. Endowment earnings, private gifts, and other sources provide additional support.
of subject librarians, the availability of dedicated quiet spaces, and technology-equipped group study rooms in which to access, explore, discuss, and produce information. The UC library system includes more than 100 libraries at the 10 campuses, the California Digital Library, and two regional library facilities. UC’s library system has the second largest number of volumes held in the United States; with more than 38 million print volumes and 5 million e-books available systemwide, the collection is surpassed only by the Library of Congress. In 2012-13, the economic value of the physical collection was estimated at $1.1 billion and the special collections at $354 million, or 5.2% of UC’s net capital assets. More than 2.9 million items were loaned by UC libraries in 2012-13, including over 222,000 intercampus library loans and copies. Use of the libraries’ digital collections continues to escalate, as more materials are available primarily or solely online. In 2012, more than 32 million journal articles were
downloaded within UC.
State and UC General
Funds 64% Student Tuition and
Fees 10%
Other/ Restricted 26%
Academic Support – Libraries
Display IX-2: 2012-13 Library Expenditures by Category
Over 40% of the libraries’ budget provides for the purchase, preparation and use of library materials in a variety of formats (print, digital, multimedia, and objects). As in other functions of the University, salaries and benefits are the largest collective expenditure.
Display IX-3: UC Libraries At-A-Glance, 2012-13
Number of Libraries 100+
Library Holdings
Print volumes 38,000,000
Audio, video, and visual materials 21,245,000
Maps 2,200,000
Microcopy and microfilm 29,400,000
Average e-books on each campus 500,000
Digitized UC volumes in HathiTrust 3,700,000 Electronic-journals licensed collectively 53,500 Digitized items in campus collections 17,630,000 Library Use
Digital articles downloaded 32,000,000
Total library loans 2,900,000
Intercampus loans 222,000
Regional facility loans 123,000
Note: Numbers rounded. Data reported by all 10 campuses and the CDL.
THE LIBRARY BUDGET
The total budget of the libraries is $266 million in 2013-14. About three-quarters of the library budget is derived from core funds (State support, UC General Funds, and student tuition and fee revenue). Significant restricted funding is provided from endowment earnings and private gifts and grants.
As in other areas of the University, the libraries’ greatest expenses are salaries and benefits for more than 2,300 employees, including professional librarians, IT professionals, and support staff, as well as hundreds of student workers. Compensation and benefits represent
57% of library expenditures in 2012-13. Library materials, which include books, subscriptions, and licensing of digital materials, made up another 43%.
As the cost of library materials continues to outpace inflation, campus libraries face increasing budgetary pressures. Expansion in academic and research programs continues to increase demand for library collection growth in all formats, and students continue to demand long hours and extended access to library facilities that provide technologically well-equipped and flexible learning environments.
Over the last 34 years, the State has provided substantial support for UC’s strategy to promote library development on a systemwide basis. Over the last decade, however, the State has been unable to provide full funding to meet the impact of persistent price increases for library materials, which consistently outpace the rate of inflation, as shown in Display IX-4.
To address past funding shortfalls for library collections and services, the libraries identified and developed strategies to reduce costs and promote broader and more efficient use of library resources. As shown in Display IX-5, these include reduced purchasing costs through interlibrary lending, lower capital costs resulting from use of shared off-site facilities, and savings from systemwide digital collections development and shared journal subscriptions.
Display IX-4: Consumer, Higher Education, and Periodical Price Increases
Over the last 20 years, the cost of periodicals has risen more than 348%, while the consumer price index has risen only 65% during the same period. This cost increase has not changed in the digital environment.
Academic Salaries 13% Benefits 16% Library Collection 33% Staff Salaries 28% Other Library Materials 10% 0% 50% 100% 150% 200% 250% 300% 350% 400%
Academic Support – Libraries
Through the California Digital Library, the UC libraries have negotiated dozens of favorable contracts with large publishers and vendors, resulting in millions of dollars in savings for digital serial licenses and other digital materials.
THE LIBRARY PROGRAM
The University libraries employ a systemwide strategy that emphasizes campus collaboration and application of new technologies to create a multi-campus library system with capabilities for coordination and sharing of resources that are unequalled by the research libraries of comparable university systems.
This systemwide strategy also results in millions of dollars in avoided costs annually. Through their campus libraries, UC faculty and students have enjoyed faster and more convenient access to a larger universe of information in a wider variety of formats, even in the face of rising costs and constrained budgets. The UC libraries have taken advantage of their combined strengths as a system and developed numerous programs that decrease costs and improve efficiency while increasing access to the distinct library collections offered at each UC campus.
Discovery and Delivery Services for print and digital library materials provide faculty, students, and staff with seamless access to the UC libraries’ extensive research collections. These core services include the MELVYL catalog for discovery of materials at UC and worldwide, direct linking from citations to online journal articles via UC- eLinks, and the Request Service to facilitate intercampus lending and document delivery. The Request Service, developed by the UC libraries, sends interlibrary loan requests directly to lending institutions, saving time and effort by delivering journal articles online, retaining users’ profile information, and providing citation information. UC’s Resource Sharing Program, which includes overnight courier services, facilities for immediate scanning
Display IX-5: Estimated Annual Savings from Library Innovations and Efficiencies (Dollars in Millions)
Resource Sharing $35.8
Regional Libraries Facilities $22.2
California Digital Library $73.8
Total $131.8
and electronic delivery of journal articles and other brief items, and interlibrary lending, expedites the borrowing of materials across the system.
UC’s Regional Library Facilities (RLFs) in Richmond and Los Angeles house more than 13 million volumes of infrequently used materials of enduring research value deposited by campus libraries. The RLFs also house the UC Shared Print Collection, which contains single print copies of material widely available in electronic format, for systemwide use or archival purposes. The existence of a designated shared print collection enables individual campuses to discard duplicate print copies, secure in the knowledge that there is a copy available in the central collection that will be preserved and available.
In order to achieve even further economies of scale, the UC libraries are leading the Western Storage Regional Trust (WEST) initiative to establish a regional shared print journal archive with other institutions in the western region of the United States. The initiative will help libraries at UC and beyond make collection decisions that make more efficient use of limited shelf and storage space.
The California Digital Library (CDL) supports the development of systemwide digital collections and facilitates the sharing of materials and services used by libraries across the UC system. Through systemwide co- investments with the campus libraries, the CDL makes available approximately 53,520 online journals to students, faculty, researchers, and staff from all UC campuses. The CDL maintains the Online Archive of California, which includes 37,000 online collection guides and 339,000 digital images and documents from 309 libraries, archives, and museums across the state; a Web Archiving Service; a data curation center; eScholarship for publishing open access scholarly materials; and Calisphere, a compendium of freely accessible online collections for California K-20 education. The CDL works in partnership with campuses to share the collections in UC’s libraries, museums, and cultural heritage organizations with the broader community; in the future, the CDL will continue to use innovative technology to connect content and communities in ways that enhance teaching, learning, and research.
Academic Support – Libraries
Millions of books from the UC libraries have been scanned through participation in mass digitization partnerships with Google and the Internet Archive. These projects expand the libraries’ ability to provide faculty, students, and the general public with access to collections, as well as help preserve the content. Full text of public domain works, including historic and special collections, is freely available for browsing, reading, downloading, and research uses such as text-mining and digital scholarship.
The UC Libraries are founding partners in the HathiTrust, a collaboration of top-tier research universities to archive and share their digital collections. Through the HathiTrust, UC gains access to millions of digitized materials in the public domain, and benefits from cost-effective and reliable storage and preservation of its own materials.
TheUC Curation Center (UC3) will help ensure that research data archiving and preservation meet the requirements of funding agencies by leveraging expertise
and resources across UC to provide management, curation, and preservation of scholarly data.
Looking to the future, UC libraries are accelerating the digital transition by creating high-quality collections in digital formats while continuing to acquire traditional formats where needed. They are leading the way in the
development of new licensing approaches, including open access and other new publishing models, pioneering solutions for the preservation and curation of digital materials, and expanding collaborative activities for greater efficiency. The libraries are becoming increasingly active partners in the dissemination of research, further ensuring that faculty, students, staff, and the general public have access to the world of UC’s scholarly collections and beyond. All of the UC libraries’ activities support the mission of UC as a leading research engine in the growth of California, the advancement of knowledge, and the education of California’s youth for a competitive workforce.