The Office of Systemwide Library Planning sponsored two regional seminars in late fall 2003 to discuss scholarly communication issues and strategies for change.  More than 60 participants hailing from all UC campuses and a wide-ranging set of disciplines (including the sciences and health sciences, humanities, and social sciences) attended.  More than 20 key thematic issues were identified, and are posed as questions for UC action in the attendant report (available at http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/scholarly/fall_03_facultyforums.html).

In related news, a letter outlining efforts initiated in the Academic Senate and among the UC’s libraries to address scholarly communication was recently sent to all UC faculty from Academic Senate Chair Lawrence Pitts and the University Librarians.  The letter, while announcing the successful completion of negotiations with publisher Reed Elsevier, cautions that, “However great our success in securing an acceptable contract with a single publisher, we have only just begun to address the deeper structural problems in scholarly communication that fundamentally threaten the academy.” Full text of the letter is available at http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/facmemoscholcomm_010704.pdf.