More Information
Since fall 2025, UCLA Library has been undertaking comprehensive structural change to provide a more effective and scalable approach to Library services and expertise, with the goal of implementation by January 2027. The following months will focus on assessment, engagement with campus stakeholders and calibration.
Structural changes at the Library are guided by the university's OneUCLA(opens in a new tab) framework, which expresses the campus’ shared purpose and collective potential, shaped by the UCLA Strategic Plan(opens in a new tab). The Library aims to improve our ability to meet the university’s research, teaching and learning mission by working within a reconfigured and interdependent structure that is connective and impactful.
For faculty, students and other researchers, services are largely unchanged and day-to-day interactions with the Library should feel familiar. This update explains more about the restructuring process, from our guiding principles and rationale to the essential changes underway.
Guiding Principles
The restructure is guided by the following principles:
Collections are foundational. Building, stewarding, activating and connecting people to collections are foundational to teaching and learning support, research support and programming.
Information literacy is an essential life skill. Library experts have supported student understanding and evaluation of information for decades. This service is critical to lifelong learning, especially given the challenges of AI, misinformation and disinformation pervasive in society today.
Every service has defined unit-based ownership. Each Library service is owned by a defined Library unit, with clear expectations for contribution from associated departments across the Library. This shift will enable more uniform coverage and service experience for users.
Mission-aligned expertise. Subject, language, format and technical expertise remain essential and will adapt as necessary to support evolving campus needs. Library employees retain meaningfully defined roles that value individual expertise with a shared understanding of goals, undergirded by accountability to UCLA’s mission.
Data-informed. Assessment is built into the structure as a permanent function, as opposed to project-based.
Rationale for Restructure
Scholarship and student needs have shifted. The higher education and research environment has changed dramatically in the last few decades, requiring academic libraries to evolve their service models and organizational structures. Specifically:
Demand continues to grow for research data support, scholarly communication and open access expertise, research impact services, and collections that support new research and teaching methods.
Research itself is more interdisciplinary. By organizing experts into collaborative, team-based cohorts, the Library can scale research and instruction services to serve all areas of scholarship more evenly.
Research libraries nationally have shifted purchasing from bound materials to electronic formats. At the same time, interlibrary resource sharing has risen. Together, these trends illustrate a durable shift from ownership to access. This shift prioritizes coordinated, enterprise-wide collection strategy over specific location-based, building-by-building practices.
For an R1 library like UCLA, maintaining distinctive physical collections simultaneously with the above allows the Library to support the depth and breadth of the UCLA research and teaching enterprise.
As pedagogical approaches change, the Library is shifting services and collections access to align with and support evolving teaching trends in collaboration with other campus experts.
Essential Change
The access and support that faculty, students and other researchers rely on from the Library will stay the same, with more consistency and coordination behind the scenes.
The Library’s enduring commitments
Library expertise across disciplines, formats and languages
Inclusive and inviting spaces
Access to globally renowned collections
Collaboration with campus partners
How the Library is evolving
Internal structure that facilitates greater interdependence
Balanced resource allocation across units
Service approaches that are holistic, sustainable and scalable
Enhanced opportunities for collaboration
What to expect in 2027
Regular assessment of our effectiveness with campus stakeholders, including semi-annual data reports to Academic Senate committees.
An interdependent and well-developed workforce that provides consistent services.
Library colleagues and services engaged in support of current teaching and research.
Contact
We welcome your feedback and questions at restructure@library.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab).