The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has announced £9.84 million of funding for the creation of the UK Research Reserve (UKRR) following a successful 18-month pilot. The UKRR is a collaborative initiative of higher education libraries led by Imperial College London and the British Library.
Under the agreement, the British Library will store low-use journals for the higher education community and make them accessible to researchers and others using the latest ordering and delivery systems.
The UKRR will safeguard the long term future of printed research journals. Low-use journals will be stored and maintained at the British Library, enabling quick and easy access to research materials. Building on the strengths of the British Library's document supply service, researchers can choose to access journal articles in printed or electronic format. The British Library will ensure efficient use of resources allowing universities to reclaim the space from journal storage and re-purpose it for new opportunities, for example research and learning. By the end of the five-year programme, 100 km of shelf space is expected to be released, amounting to capital savings of £29 million.
The initiative is seen to address the problem of libraries across the UK with duplicate copies of low use periodicals and offer a more sophisticated approach to providing information for the nation's research community.
