THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY
A FRAMEWORK FOR PLANNING AND STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
OCTOBER 1996

A. THE CHALLENGE

Along with their national and international peers, the libraries of the University of California (UC) approach the twenty-first century in a state of financial crisis. In the acceleration of a process that began in the 1960s, the past decade has seen a compounding differential between needs and capacities push the library system--which stands at the core of the University's research, teaching, and public service missions--beyond the limits of its present operating model. The accompanying chart details some of the more critical challenges faced by all nine campus libraries, challenges which are currently preventing the libraries from meeting the information resource and service needs of faculty and students.

B. THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY: A VISION

President Atkinson has described a Cyberlibrary of California that " can be explored by all with access to the Internet" and that "will link together digital collections of knowledge and information, not just at UC but across the state and beyond" (Appendix A). It will, he said, be created by joining "the talents and resources of our colleges and universities, and our public libraries, in a momentous partnership with the corporate sector...." By simultaneously expanding sources of support and communities of users, this bold vision offers a means to break the cycle of rising costs and declining resources that threatens the University's, indeed California's, 'knowledge commons'. Innovative human, financial, organizational, and technical systems will make the Cyberlibrary possible and sustainable.

The Executive Working Group is excited by President Atkinson's vision, and encouraged that the highest levels of UC administration are focused on this opportunity. In fact, the most salient reason for moving ahead with the UCDL is that it represents a unique opportunity to:

(1) provide equality of access to information, supported by appropriate business models, to all UC faculty and students, independent of time and place;
(2) provide access to new and valuable types of information which are available only in electronic form;
(3) partner with other segments of the California educational system, and the business community, for mutual benefit;
(4) develop new economic models which distribute costs across a larger user population, making information resources and services more affordable within UC as well as newly- available to other communities;
(5) influence changes in scholarly and scientific communication for the benefit of the international scholarly community; and
(6) assume leadership and influence national policy in an emerging area critical to society at large as we move towards the 21st century.

The Executive Working Group's vision of the UCDL is consistent with President Atkinson's 'Cyberlibrary'; indeed, it is an essential building block of that larger superstructure. Rooted in more than a decade of thought and experimentation by leaders in the field, the specifics of the vision we present are neither an impossible dream nor a quick fix. Much of what the UCDL will be remains to be discovered and invented in a process guided by a strong commitment to sustaining California's research libraries.

The UCDL should be much more than an automated version of the existing paper library. From a functional perspective, we view the UCDL as the point of entry to a growing corpus of high quality digital content and services. Personal communication tools will allow users to create, share, manipulate, store, and use information. An effortless network interface will permit easy dissemination of and access to the world's knowledge.

Existing in symbiosis with paper-based library resources and services, the UCDL complements, and does not replace, the existing paper-based resource system, which is recognized as one of the best in the world. The UCDL is expected to grow rapidly supported by a combination of internal and external resources.

From an organizational perspective, we view the UCDL as a set of human, financial, and technological systems which enable knowledge generation, access, and use, with four primary roles:

(1) information preservation, storage, and retrieval;
(2) information access and delivery via electronic communications;
(3) the on-line publishing of the scholarly and scientific knowledge base, or knowledge management; and
(4) information management consultation and training.

It is important to note that these roles are viable only in the context of new business models which are scalable with an exponential growth in digital information.

The UCDL is involved in all activities of the information transfer cycle. The UCDL is not necessarily the exclusive performer of these roles; indeed in many functions, it may play a minor role, while other collaborators, e.g., publishers and individual scholars and scientists, are more significant in terms of the breadth and depth of their contribution. However, in all cases, the UCDL adds value, in partnership with others, through every step of this cycle. For example, the UCDL will broker access to and delivery of information from content owners and creators around the world, as well as make available its own content. The UCDL will work in partnership with others, ranging from individual faculty members to scholarly publishers and commercial information vendors. The technology with which it operates will serve as a tool for the management of content in ways that enhance its accessibility and usefulness to all members of the University community. Both face-to-face and network-mediated service will be a hallmark of the UCDL, enabling users throughout the University to find the most appropriate and effective ways of accomplishing a wide range of tasks.

The Executive Working Group strongly believes that there is a significant new role for the UCDL in the digital publishing of the scholarly and scientific knowledge base. Indeed, herein lies a special opportunity for long-term transformation of the current modes of communication, namely the scholarly monograph and the scientific journal, which are breaking down for economic and other reasons. Examples of UC libraries supporting faculty knowledge dissemination efforts exist on several campuses already. A systemwide initiative to re-examine intellectual property rights is relevant to efforts in this area. Of course, the relationship of the libraries to the UC Press would need to be further explored as well.

Appendix B describes and defines in more detail the Executive Working Group's thinking and discussions regarding the UCDL. It can serve as a useful backdrop to future discussions of roles, functions, and services of the UCDL.

C. ORGANIZATIONAL FRAMEWORK

New organizational frameworks and enhanced links among existing structures will be necessary to make the UCDL a reality. Specifically, the UCDL will require an organization that is:

(1) closely linked to the University;
(2) responsive to academic planning;
(3) linked to academic programs as well as collecting units such as libraries and museums;
(4) capable of brokering relationships with external entities, such as forming overlapping consortia for: leveraging buying power for specialized or unusually costly content; incorporation of unique collections, some belonging to other institutions; and enabling other California constituencies, including K-12 to higher education, to access and use information.
(5) entrepreneurial;
(6) technologically sophisticated and robust
(7) staffed by a multidisciplinary team of library and information professionals, as well as subject specialists;
(8) capable of leveraging resources across the UC system; and
(9) capable of acting with speed and flexibility.

Decisions about how and when and with what degree of formality to embed the UCDL in larger entities must be made at the highest levels in the UC governance structure. UC must remain sensitive to decisions at the State level that may determine whether, as suggested by the President's Cyberlibrary of California concept, funding will be extended to include among the primary users of the UCDL such constituencies as CSU, the California Community Colleges, and K-12. UC could seek to lead intersegmental coalitions in seeking state funding for the Cyberlibrary--whether through bond issues like Proposition 203, through appropriations for operating costs, or through project allocations.

Appendix C describes three possible alternative organizational structures: UCDL as co-library; UCDL as an extension of the existing library structure; and UCDL as a non-profit. Viewing organization as a problem-solving technique, the Executive Working Group believes that the real issue at this stage is to determine the next step, not necessarily the final step. It seems probable that experience may well dictate an evolutionary progression from one organizational framework to another and yet another.

In selecting the initial UCDL framework, the following are key considerations:

(1) the potential to serve the needs of faculty and other members of the UC community ;
(2) the feasibility of rapid start-up;
(3) the ability to evolve as conditions change and understanding increases; and
(4) the ability to move near-term special initiatives forward and provide the venue for collecting information and assessing the implications of different kinds of relationships.

Our consensus is that the UCDL as co-library is most appropriate at this time. One of our assumptions is that a multi-institutional California digital library will become a feasible goal only if a functional UCDL has first been developed within UC as Phase One. A University of California DL would move aggressively towards providing access to a larger population of users, as described in this document, but would be managed as a University-wide entity. This is an inside-structure. To move President Atkinson's Cyberlibrary forward, it may be necessary to have an outside-structure. Thus, a not-for-profit might very well be appropriate within 3 years, either as a free-standing organization or one component of the co-library. If UC were to follow this path, several actions would need to be taken in 1997:

(1) appoint UCDL management and governance structures;
(2) develop a budgetary model that will underwrite the co-library as a "common good" for the entire University
(3) develop an acquisitions mechanism that will provide digital content to which all University of California faculty, students, and staff have equal access;
(4) develop mechanisms for setting digital acquisition priorities on the basis of academic program needs; and
(5) develop mechanisms for improving coordination between information technology units and libraries on a systemwide basis.

D. FINANCIAL FRAMEWORK

Several assumptions serve as the foundation for the Executive Working Group's thinking on the development of a sustainable financial model to support the UCDL.

(1) the UCDL will take shape in an environment in which State funding will not adequately support building and operating the UCDL;
(2) new capital budgetary resources will be necessary to build the UCDL;
(3) UCDL access and services to CSU, the California Community Colleges, K-12, California business, and the general population present a unique opportunity to develop a new statewide model for funding the UCDL;
(4) Mechanisms for generating revenue from operations are likely to be a component of the UCDL funding model; and
(5) Significant direct savings from the traditional library are not likely in the near-term; however, it is possible and necessary to construct future financial models which reprogram some savings to maintaining the long-term growth of the UCDL.

The Executive Working Group does not have suffcient information to suggest a funding formula at this time. However, it does advocate the discussion and potential adoption of key principles:

(1) financial arrangements for the UCDL should encourage UC users to seek the information they need;
(2) revenues generated by the UCDL must not be treated as replacements for State funding;
(3) firm commitments must be made across the UC system to funding 'common good' elements of the UCDL, regardless of the source of funds;
(4) the principle of "One University, One Library" should be upheld in developing funding mechanisms for the UCDL despite conflicting tendencies that will inevitably arise from campus-based budgeting;
(5) academic need must be paramount in establishing priorities for investment in the UCDL.

The UCDL offers both a significant resource for UC alumni and a potential opportunity to increase alumni support of UC and its libraries. A sustainable business model would need to be developed for this to become a reality. Moreover, while this is an attractive notion, there are several problems which would need to be solved relative to content licensing and scalability.

Principles must be established for determining what costs are assigned to the UCDL and which belong to general infrastructure. UCDL bandwidth and connectivity requirements may be drivers for campus and Universitywide infrastructure and should not be separated from general infrastructure investments.

Many other issues remain open to discussion and can be resolved only with the agreement of high level decisionmakers. The choices they entail will influence the University of California's knowledge management for decades to come. Among them:

• What kind of funding mechanism should replace formulas based on student FTE for access and services provided by the UCDL to all nine campuses ? How should local and central functions be integrated in the context of campus-based budgeting ? What incentives will induce chancellors to contribute to the UCDL ? How should funding be distributed, and who will be responsible for different levels of service and content ?

• What principles should determine which functions and users should be subsidized and which should be based on cost-recovery financing ? How should the primacy of academic priorities be assured in a system that combines subsidized and revenue generating activities ? How should subsidies be accounted for and where should the responsibility for them lie ?

• What principles should determine how budgetary obligations should be distributed between the UCDL and Universitywide infrastructure (e.g., bandwidth, user work stations, productivity software vs. databases, specialized user support services, expert systems development) ?

• How should the balance be struck between external project funding and ongoing operations funding ? When should external fundseeking be constrained by downstream impacts on continuing operations ?

• What should distinguish capital and operating expenses in the context of continuing needs to upgrade infrastructure and operating platforms ?

• How should costs be recovered for services and information delivered beyond UC ? How should revenue opportunities be identified and developed ?

• Should alternatives to the tradition of "free" access to the library for members of the University be considered ? Might access to digital information be treated like a ubiquitous utility ? If so, should it charged to organizational units or individuals ? If fees are necessary, would flat fees be more efficient than metered usage fees ?

• Should the University pass on the cost of fee-for-use licensing agreements to end users ? If so, should all end users be treated the in same way ?

The low marginal cost of making electronic content and automated services available to additional users and the possibility of charging for customized services to the external community suggest that the UCDL may be able to deliver substantial information services to the private sector and the general public on a cost-recovery or revenue basis. Commercial vendors successfully market intellectual property created in subsidized university environments. Careful exploration--including some pilot projects--will be needed to determine how the UCDL might enter this market and whether it can or should compete with the private sector in providing information services. Potential products include content published through the UCDL, sophisticated data retrieval and organization services, and instruction in UCDL use. Versions of the last are currently offered through some units of UC Extension, and campus data archives perform services on a contract basis to non-UC entities including state agencies. It may be appropriate to create self-supporting organizational structures like University Extension to broker services. Another approach might be to license commercial vendors to provide access to the UCDL. In so doing, the University would need to be sensitive to the implications of competing with private sector vendors while seeking to capture some of the revenues generated by the resources it manages.

E. CONTENT: COLLECTION, ACCESS, AND MANAGEMENT

In the digital library, content and its management remains the single most important component of the library. The UCDL should comprise a three-tiered array of resources developed in a process integrated with academic program planning. Access should range from core content available for use anywhere, any time in the University of California to material that can be used "at your own risk," "as is," or for a privately paid fee by those who choose to explore cyberspace beyond the UCDL. In between should be material for which the UCDL takes only partial responsibility because the user base is limited or the owner cannot provide full access or support.

For paper-based libraries, core collections are defined in terms of material that is considered to be essential for academic reasons; they comprise materials that are purchased, and choices about what to acquire are made on the basis of academic priority within budgetary constraints. In the digital environment, licensing and electronic document delivery mechanisms allow the additional possibility of providing access to academically important content by permitting users to pay for it on more favorable terms than individual users could obtain for themselves. Incorporating capabilities created by such unbundling, the UCDL should develop a core collection of fully subsidized, quality-filtered content available for uninhibited use by all UC users. An intermediate tier should consist of content for which the UCDL and users share responsibility for selection, payment, or both. Thus, content that is recognized as valuable but very expensive or needed by only a small group of users may be available on a fee basis, or content with lower academic priority may be available to those who wish to construct their own search and retrieval strategies. In addition, the UCDL should facilitate access to content residing outside its scope of responsibility.

Criteria for designating what content should belong to the core and partially-supported tiers should be established with faculty and student guidance to serve the teaching, research, and public service priorities of the University. These criteria should include the likely number and distribution of University users and the importance of specific material for the field in which it is used.

Content defined as belonging to the core collection should be maintained to the same standards as core paper collections, where appropriate. This would include appropriate cataloging, archival maintenance, uninhibited use for UC users, and printing capability.

The UCDL should span print and non-print domains with links between the existing infrastructure of bibliographic access systems, such as Melvyl, and systems that provide bibliographic access to dynamic digital materials. In making collection decisions to allocate finite resources to the greatest institutional advantage, the UCDL should treat faculty and student time as the resource that must be most carefully conserved: access, support services, and preservation should be organized to enable faculty and students to find and use the information they must have most efficiently.

Appendix D documents further substantial discussions by the Executive Working Group regarding complex content management issues.

F. INFORMATION POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

Two fundamental principles of traditional university library management must migrate from the print to the digital environment:

(1) users must be able to access information while maintaining their own privacy; and
(2) works contained in the library must be intended for open use.

Under the doctrine of first sale, traditional libraries own the materials they lend and do not report individual usage to third parties. In the digital world, where much end-user access is mediated through library license agreements and every use is electronically noted, arrangements must be made to protect that right to privacy. In concluding license agreements that base fees on usage, the UCDL must develop mechanisms for metering use that permit individual identities to be masked.

The principle of open use is equally fundamental in keeping with the provision in the Academic Personnel Manual that research results must be available for publication:

All such [sponsored] research shall be conducted so as to be as generally useful as possible. To this end, the right of publication is reserved by the University. The University may itself publish the material or may authorize, in any specific case, a member or members of the faculty to publish it through some recognized scientific or professional medium of publication. A report detailing the essential data and presenting the final results must be filed with the University. Notebooks and other original records of the research are the property of the University.¹

Materials may be deposited in special collections with restrictions on use (e.g., correspondence that cannot be examined during the lifetimes of its creators or data that is restricted prior to filing a patent application), but it is presumed that these are temporary. The UCDL should adopt the principle that, although material may be placed in its collection with access restrictions, the intent should be that the information would eventually be made public. Similarly, the intent in selecting storage media and software should be to enable migration as technologies evolve so that information may be effectively preserved for future use.

Informing all functions of the UCDL should be the intent to support and enhance the free flow of information and scholarly discourse. For materials unique to UC, that principle should be implemented by licensing the right to use them beyond the University. The terms of license agreements are a policy-driven decision the University will need to make. In crafting license agreements, it will be essential to promote principles of reciprocity with other institutions. Specific instances may vary widely according to circumstances, but in every case, the agreement should enhance rather than constrict information exchange. At the same time, if licensees seek commercial gain from their use of UC materials, UC will have a fiduciary responsibility to obtain a reasonable share for reinvestment in the UCDL. Competition between the requirements of free knowledge sharing and the revenue potential of proprietary information will drive a persistent balancing effort.

The development of dissemination functions in digital libraries has been imagined to provide an answer to the cost-driven journal crisis that is perceived to be strangling scientific communication. In this context, extensive discussions of copyright have produced suggestions that universities or individual faculty members retain copyright to scholarly works rather than relinquishing it to external publishers. Such decisions are far from simple and must be made at the institutional level.

G. TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE

A sophisticated and robust inter- and intra-campus technological infrastructure is an essential prerequisite to the UCDL. Without such an infrastructure, the UCDL cannot exist.

At this early stage of UCDL planning, discussion of technology architecture and infrastructure is a discussion of context and design principles intended to remove barriers to policy choices regarding content, access, and/or functionality. Appendix E describes what must be accomplished but leaves to a future system design team the task of specifying the technical means to achieve these goals. It is important to emphasize that the system must be designed with the understanding that content will outlive generations of access, storage, and retrieval technology and data formats and must migrate repeatedly without loss or distortion.

It is important, however, to recognize that for the intermediate term continued infrastructure development will require incremental investment centrally and by the campuses, and that the services envisioned as part of the UCDL, including remote access, will require more bandwidth than UC currently has planned. The Office of the President and the nine campuses should continue and expand their investment in IT networking infrastructure and faculty/student/staff access and know-how for state-of-the-art hardware and software.

The University should explore the development of network access capabilities beyond the physical boundaries of the University, with particular attention to moving beyond modem access in the classroom and off campus. Working with the system-wide Communications Planning Group, opportunities should be sought to conduct pilot projects in cooperation with communications companies, from local cable firms to global enterprises.

Critical improvements are necessary in two functional areas: (1) print-on-demand infrastructure for electronic materials which are printable; (2) mechanisms for variable charging; and (3) an effective and rational authentication structure. Printing facilities offering cost, convenience, and quality options should be widely available.

H. USER TRAINING SUPPORT SERVICES

(1) Varieties of users

User training support services for the UCDL must be responsive to two very different clusters of needs among the primary user population (UC faculty, students, and staff). Undergraduate students, who comprise the numerically dominant portion of the University community, are a population in constant transition: every year, approximately one-quarter are newcomers who require instruction in the most basic functions of search and retrieval and socialization into information management in the University setting. Conditioned by the commercial market to expect attractive and transparent interfaces, and perhaps familiar with a variety of object manipulation techniques, they bring little knowledge of the content they seek to use and turn to library staff more often than to faculty for guidance not only in how to look for something but also in what to look. For the most part, faculty and graduate students comprise the other major component of the user community. They bring deep content knowledge, proficiency with search and retrieval procedures that were in place in the print environment, and varying degrees of awareness of the new material to which they wish to gain access and how to do that. Teaching strategies that are effective for undergraduates are unlikely to serve faculty, who may need complex one-on-one help in data retrieval and manipulation and who frequently know precisely what they want but not how to find it. Both constituencies will make increasingly heavy demands for support services. Survey data collected at selected campuses clearly indicates that faculty view the lack of appropriate training as the major barrier in using electronic information systems.

Given President Atkinson's "Cyberlibrary" vision, the UCDL may become a powerful vehicle for outreach to communities far beyond traditional University boundaries. In so doing, it will expand the numbers of users as well as the range of needs and abilities. Aspects of this function may take place in direct relationships between individual campuses and external constituencies or a unique UCDL training arm. In developing user training and support services, UCDL policy should examine creating service categories for which user fees may be charged. Services such as UCDL consulting and training might, for example, be made available on cost-recovery basis to K-12, California Community College, and CSU educators and on a revenue-generating fee-for-service basis to alumni and perhaps all California citizens. Training and support services might also be offered on a contract basis to Internet service providers or employers. Alternatively or in addition, UC could ask its partners to develop their own user training support services tailored to the needs of their own constituents. Thus, for example, CSU and California Community College librarians could provide search, reference and introductory training services on their own campuses, while UC would take on the role of training these trainers.

(2) Varieties of information

User training support services should be adequately supported to respond to additional needs dictated by the changing nature of digital content. Coherent and logical access methodologies and regular monitoring of access paths are essential for making content mounted at distributed sites available to users as needed. Lack of support for these functions would seriously compromise the ability of the UCDL to deliver the quality information management required by a research university. In addition, digital content may represent an unlimited variety of information objects and formats, requiring sophisticated techniques to search and analyze. As users explore knowledge frontiers, they will need help in managing the data they find. Moreover, the UCDL offers the possibility of mounting primary data for others to analyze, which will require at the least the kind of assistance now offered in data archives. The digital library environment is projected to continue in flux into the foreseeable future, with enormous increases in volume, diversity of collections, and varieties of search tools. Search tools, currently in their infancy, will be especially fluid as approaches now at the research stage become useful tools over the next few years. Such conditions will require continuous education for UCDL staff in order to maintain their ability to train and support users. The challenge is generic, affecting all campuses and requiring coordination to minimize duplication and deploy distributed specialization in the most effective ways possible.

I. HUMAN RESOURCES

The human resource needs for the UCDL will be satisfied by a combination of today's library staff and individuals from a multitude of other areas including collecting, communications, technology, and academic units that are not now formally linked to library entities. How existing roles will transition and change is unknown, and a flexible and open approach to identifying and solving issues and tensions will need to be adopted.

The transition and evolution should be managed in ways that build on and leverage the current competencies in dozens of units across the nine campuses. It should also be acknowledged that core information management functions of the UCDL will continue to require skilled professional, technical and paraprofessional staff. The UCDL should develop a structure that fosters advancement and increased payback for individual efforts and that provides for the continuous acquisition of new skills and competencies, in order that current staff might grow with the changing environment. Evolution toward a growing digital environment will require flexibility, creativity, responsiveness, and continuous acquisition of new skills in parallel and interdependent paper and digital libraries. To achieve these goals, Universitywide UCDL organization should focus on strong coordination, facilitation, and communication functions among the individuals providing direct service throughout the University. Centrally-administered training in areas of common need can be highly cost-effective.

On-line communications technologies and distributed gateways will enable users to seek an increased level of assistance from remote sites. At the same time, it can be anticipated that face-to-face interactions between students and UCDL staff will continue to be driven by the students' need for instruction in negotiating a challenging and unfamiliar environment. Experience indicates that, despite the availability of intelligent systems, increasing remote access will also increase demands for service, both online and face-to-face. To meet user expectations, campus libraries will need to provide general user support staff capable of assisting a wide range of students and other users. At the same time, UCDL staff should be alert to opportunities to develop specialties in, for example, data forms or subject areas that effectively serve the entire UCDL. UCDL information management functions should be integrated with research and instruction, in active collaboration with faculty. The development of specialized staff competencies can be expected to enhance the level of services available to users entering through every gateway, but this promise can be realized only if staff are familiar with and cooperate across the UCDL's widely distributed network and are able to provide transparent referral services. It should also be anticipated that the UCDL will require increased user support staff to manage such aspects of 24 hour remote access, even if real-time help is available only during business hours. Inter- and intra-campus partnerships for providing service should be actively fostered.

J. STRATEGIC INITIATIVES: THE TRANSITION TO THE FUTURE

The development, implementation, and evaluation of strategic initiatives must be a key component of any UCDL plan and planning process. These initiatives serve as guides during the difficult transition from the current library system to a new library system of which the UCDL will be a growing component. UC should implement a series of such initiatives that are formally designated and coordinated as UCDL efforts.

Any strategic initiative should meet most of the following criteria:

(1) build on existing initiatives, which have demonstrated feasibility;
(2) be scalable, replicable, and practical (able to be paid for);
(3) serve a diverse and substantial University constituency;
(4) solve real problems;
(5) push development of necessary conditions for the Digital Library;
(6) be distributed across disciplines and focus on both services and collections;
(7) generate strategic experience, particularly in the areas of cost modelling and human factors.

Such initiatives will become rich sources of data on the potential for the UCDL to provide services that are not constrained by campus boundaries, and they will identify organizational, staffing, and financial resources that will be necessary to implement the full vision. These projects should be considered as experimental first nodes in an expanding UCDL organizational entity rather than as one-time efforts.

Early on, the Executive Working Group was directed by CINITAP to prepare proposals for strategic initiatives which could be brought forward early in 1996. The Executive Working Group identified four strategic areas for protoypes:

(1) digitization;
(2) scholarly and scientific communication;
(3) digital content in support of undergraduate instruction (local and remote); and
(4) community service, including healthcare and University outreach activities.

In a review of digital library work going on across the nine campuses, the Executive Working Group chose the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) work that had begun at Berkeley, the electronic journals experiment (Red Sage Project) at San Francisco, and the digital content work in support of undergraduate instruction at Berkeley, San Diego and Santa Cruz as fundamental to the foundation of the UCDL. These choices were highly constrained by time, and the intention was not to ignore the many other important projects going on around the University. Nonetheless, the Executive Working Group also strongly felt that the work it singled out met the criteria it had established and its potential for success in the immediate timeframe was high.

Brief descriptions of three initiatives follow. The EAD project is co-funded by OP and the campus libraries and is proceeding forward. The UC Digital Library Science, Technology, and Industry Collection is proceeding through further conceptualization and planning. The undergraduate instruction project has been outlined in detail and could go forward for funding.

(1) Digitization: EAD Project

Anyone who has ever done research in special collections and archives knows the frustration of traveling to a distant site and examining the contents of dozens of boxes only to find that nothing relevant to the project at hand is contained there. University of California special collections, including both archival materials and images, encompass as many as 100 million pages of original material that cannot be accommodated under standard cataloging protocols for print matter.

Although some of these materials have been cataloged electronically by author and title, there is currently no accepted practice for providing information about content. Over the years, individual collection managers have created extensive descriptions of many of their contents, following formats and conventions adapted to the peculiar characteristics of the material being described. However, the new standard, known as Encoded Archival Description (EAD), enables standardized incorporation of the finding aids generated by individual collections into a single database.

This initiative will benefit greatly students, as well as faculty doing research. It will make it easier for students, both graduate and undergraduate, to make use of primary source materials in a broad range of disciplines, from the humanities and social sciences to public policy and environmental issues. In the context of President Atkinson's Cyberlibrary, the EAD work will provide the foundation for these enormously valuable materials to be available to all of California.

The EAD had endorsements from a range of collection heads within UC as well as by such national bodies as the Society of American Archivists, the Commission on Preservation and Access, and the Library of Congress. It seemed logical and productive to extend this work across the campuses; indeed, efforts in that regard had already begun successfully.

The Executive Working Group solicited a formal proposal from a group of UC librarians, and worked with them in their preparation of a proposal in the context of the UCDL. The Executive Working Group brought this proposal to CINITAP and the Library Council, which in turn both recommended UCOP funding. UCOP funded 50% of the requested funds, and the University Librarians were directed to raise matching funds, which they are currently in the process of doing.

This UCDL strategic initiative will pursue four objectives: (1) create an implementation toolkit and training package for EAD for use at any UC site; (2) devise polices and procedures for decentralized creation and maintenance of encoded finding aids; (3) devise mechanisms to link and integrate related collections contributed by different institutions; and (4) explore intellectual and technical access, description, and control issues that arise from combining materials from different institutions in a single database. This support for a networked collection of EAD finding aids will enable the implementation of a pioneering concept that can be expected to become a lasting component of the UCDL. Further, it lays the foundation for then digitizing the collections themselves.

(2) Scholarly and Scientific Communication: The UC Digital Library Science, Technology, and Industry Collection

The center of the library funding crisis is directly related to continuous high inflation in scientific, technical, and medical publishing. Digital journals are potentially a way out of this crisis, with lower costs for electronic production and delivery methods which produce economies through scaling. Importantly, electronic journals also hold many rich possibilities in equality of access, access independent of time and space, and added value through significant increases in functionality such as linkages to primary data sets. There are also a host of problems remaining to be solved, as well, including archiving, infrastructure, and human factors issues.

UC has participated in a number of electronic journal projects including TULIP Project (Elsevier materials science journals), the Red Sage Project (health sciences journals of 20 major commercial, university, and society publishers), and IEEE and IEE (electronic publications including journals from these societies). Faculty and students also have experience with electronic journals through use of the many full-text files currently available through Melvyl.

The Executive Working Group feels that it is logical for UC to build a Science, Technology, and Industry Collection as the next phase of the UCDL. Much of the electronic content that we have begun to amass and is likely to be available over the next 3 years is in the areas of science, technology, and medicine; many early electronic journal experiments have concluded that a critical mass of titles is an essential ingredient of success. A UCDL Science, Technology, and Industry Collection would provide an important laboratory for us to deal with the organizational, technical, financial, policy, human resource, and training issues in a real life setting. Solving the fiscal crisis in the sciences through the development of a new and more sustainable business model for scientific communication will go a substantial way in solving the general funding crisis in libraries, and help to restore stability to funding for humanities materials. It is important to note that President Atkinson has recently identified new areas of outreach to the business community, beyond the initial area of biotechnology. They are information technology and manufacturing engineering. Certainly, all three of these outreach areas would find a logical home within this strategic initiative.

The UCDL Science, Technology, and Industry Collection is also an opportunity to explore the potential leverage of the nine campuses in purchasing electronic journals as part of a consortium rather than individually. Guided by the University Librarians and principles developed by the UC Libraries collection development officers, and encouraged by the Executive Working Group as an important initiative, UC has been involved in negotiations with several major publishers to provide electronic journals. These negotiations are now coming to a close, and there is a valuable opportunity emerging. These electronic journals would form the core of the UCDL Science, Technology, and Industry Collection. Initially, they would supplement paper copies; targets would be set so that they would selectively replace paper wherever possible; parallel systems of paper and electronic would allow campuses to plan infrastructure enhancements effectively and deal with human factors issues. Business and institutional arrangements would pose more of a challenge than technical demands, and this project will permit feasibility tests of scenarios generated in conjunction with publishers that would provide an alternative to the present non-sustainable price spiral for scientific journals. One such scenario would the availability of this UCDL Science, Technology, and Industry Collection to other segments of the California educational system and to business and industry in California, with appropriate payment from those sector, potentially lessening the costs to UC. Indeed, such an initaitive would allow us to put in place Phase One of President Atkinson's Cyberlibrary of California.

(3) Digital Library Projects in support of undergraduate instruction

Increasingly, students need to access course materials from remote locations, either due to complex personal lives or to involvement in cross-campus distance learning. In response both to needs and to the possibilities presented by new technologies, many of the general campus libraries in the UC system have experimented with some kind of small-scale electronic reserve in support of an undergraduate course, while faculty have experimented with making course materials available on-line, often doing so from private or departmental homepages. What is missing and needed is a series of faculty-library collaborative projects, which rise from the intellectual imperatives of particular courses but are supported by staff expertise both in administration and technology and can be documented, publicized, evaluated, refined, and replicated.

The Executive Working Group developed a proposal for a competitive process in which faculty and library/information management staff apply jointly for funding to support undergraduate instruction through targeted delivery of electronic information. Several different projects will be selected, implemented, and evaluated as models for cost-effective enhancement of UC instruction. Successful projects will be integrated into the daily operations of UC libraries and other UC information repositories.

This is not an electronic publication or authorship project, but rather focuses on the historical expertise of library staff in identifying, controlling, organizing, and providing consistent, equitable access to existing electronic content. It also builds on the UC libraries' traditional strength in intercampus cooperation and resource sharing.

CINITAP would issue a call for joint faculty-library proposals for electronic information projects in support of undergraduate instruction. Proposals would focus on a particular course and originate with course faculty, who would be responsible for identifying electronic content and justifying how digital format would enhance the educational experience. Faculty would work closely with library staff, who would be responsible for developing a budget, plan of work, and time line and implementing the project accordingly. Funds would be allocated to the libraries, which could use them, both within and outside the library setting, to subsidize additional dedicated staffing, new equipment and infrastructure improvements, copyright and licensing fees, etc. Library staff would be responsible for tracking and analyzing project costs and projecting the potential for cost-effective re-use of content and infrastructure. Library staff would also be responsible both for ensuring that the faculty-librarian partnership includes other campus information professionals, as appropriate, and for ensuring that local projects are or become available on the broadest possible systemwide basis. Over time, the base of content would increase and be shared across campuses, content totally directed by faculty and student needs.

(4) Other strategic initiatives

Near the close of its deliberations, the Executive Working Group began to explore additional protoype opportunities. We would like to mention two here. Considerable thought should be given to additional strategic initiatives which could move the eventual implementation of the UCDL forward.

(a) Digital library support for online Extension courses
Currently, the Center for Media and Independent Learning, a Universitywide Extension unit, is experimenting with a partnership with America Online to offer online courses on an anywhere, anytime basis. They offer improved versions of correspondence courses, augmented with access to a substantial body of online resources for student research. A UCDL project could increase both the range and depth of available materials and might be eligible for external funding. As UC begins to explore the notion of the Cyberlibrary of California, the population served through Extension is a new and growing constituency for the University.

(b) Project Alexandria
Project Alexandria is an NSF/ARPA/NASA-funded digital library project at Santa Barbara. The goal of the Alexandria Project is to build a distributed digital library (DL) for geographically-referenced materials. A central function of Alexandria DL is to provide users with access to a large range of digital materials-ranging from maps and images to text to multimedia-in terms of geographical reference. An important type of query is "What information is there in the library about some phenomenon at a particular set of places ?". From the Internet, both users and librarians can access various components of ADL, such as its catalog and, through powerful, graphical interfaces without having to know wherethese different components are located on the Internet. Alexandria is nationally-recognized for the unique relationship bwteeen computer science researchers and the library, and it has emphasized the need to actually build a working digital library. Further, Alexandria builds on a long-standing commitment that the Santa Barbara library has in collecting information in this area, and it represents continuity with established programs which have been place for some time. Alexandria has potential to move beyond geographic data to spatial data, and thus have potential applications in medicine and science. It should be carefully looked at in the context of a UC Digital Library Science, Technology, and Industry Collection.

Last updated: 31 January 1997