“You say you want an evolution…” The emerging UC libraries shared collection

Abstract

For almost three decades now, the University of California (UC) libraries have worked together closely to ensure that all UC faculty, students, and staff have access to eminent library collections. To this end, UC's libraries have pursued a variety of initiatives for coordinating the acquisition, sharing, and preservation of campus collection resources. The Shared Purchase Program (now known as the Shared Collections and Access Program or SCAP) was established in 1976 to provide joint funding for library materials too costly for a single campus to buy. Since the mid-1980s, groups of bibliographers have worked to coordinate acquisitions activities system-wide, and the early 1990s saw the development of licensing for shared bibliographic databases to journal literature. This paper will discuss UC's latest initiative—the investigation of how the campus' two regional storage facilities (Regional Library Facilities or RLFs) can serve as repositories for both shared and stored collections.