The Evolution of a New World Order: How and Why UCLA Drew the Line between "P" and "E"

Abstract

As one of the premier research libraries in the country, the UCLA Library is a leader in creating innovative and bold approaches to navigating changes in the library landscape. As part of a large digital consortium, the California Digital Library (CDL), and with an acquisitions budget of its own, UCLA now links to tens of thousands of licensed electronic resource titles. Faced with the same laundry list of electronic resource management problems that plague other academic and public libraries, the UCLA Library gradually transformed the position of the licensing coordinator, a one-person shop, into the Digital Collections Services (DCS) unit, currently composed of four full-time and four half-time staff. DCS is responsible for the acquisition and licensing of all electronic product purchases made within the UCLA Library, as well as managing the funds that UCLA contributes to the CDL consortium. In addition, DCS oversees the local electronic resource management system and is facilitating the campus installation of the ExLibris? Verde ERM system later this year. DCS also participates in library and campus wide scholarly communication efforts, and boasts the system's only "E-Scholarship" librarian. Copyright and other rights issues also fall under the purview of DCS. The head of the unit assists librarians, faculty, and other campus staff with questions relating to copyright, permissions, authors agreements, and the like. The implementation of CDL's new rights metadata schema is also beginning to take shape under the leadership of this unit, working closely with the Digital Library Program. Staff in DCS have been reassigned from other Library units, such as acquisitions, cataloging, and collection development, and bring with them a great amount of experience in traditional library functions. As the unit continues to grow and to define itself, it must interact and work collaboratively across the campus libraries in order to develop new workflows and to further refine its goals in light of the Library's overall Strategic Plan to provide seamless access to digital material.