As a reminder, these office hours are held on the second Thursday of every month, from 10am-11am PT, and are intended to be times for any WEST member to come ask questions or discuss what they’re working on for WEST with the WEST Project Team and other WEST members. Our hope is that this can be another resource to support your work in WEST and that this will provide a place for us to come together and learn from each other as a community in a more informal setting.
]]>Highlights on Titles Cataloged for CDL-Managed Electronic Collections in January 2026
JSTOR Books 671
CNPe-Reading (易阅通) (Local-L DDA) 198
Oxford Scholarship Online Complete 120
Wiley Online Library Frontlist All English Titles 2025 51
UC eScholarship Theses and Dissertations 41
IOS Press online monographs (Local-OA) 38
Link to the full reports (UC login required)
2026-01-Total Portfolio Count of CDL-Managed Electronic Collections
2026-01-Collection level bib records of CDL-Managed Electronic Collections
New Collections added and activated
CDL is working through processing the 2026 Springer ebooks and 2026 Elsevier ebooks.
University of California Press 2026 ebooks (De Gruyter), and Project Muse 2026 ebooks have been added.
Highlights on Open Access
From the OECD iLibrary collection, approximately 478 titles were removed because they were no longer available. Attempts to contact OECD were unsuccessful and more details are in this known issues page. If you encounter unavailable titles, please report them through CDL Helpline.
OA Mono Pilot Project Update:
As a reminder to UC staff, CDL has an ongoing pilot project to add individual OA monographs to the NZ for systemwide access. This is a two year pilot that began in January 2025, and we are approximately halfway through. The request form can be found on the CDL website and is available directly at Adding Individual OA Monographic Titles. For these books, campus catalogers are asked to ensure the title is cataloged in OCLC and submit the OCLC# and URL to CDL via the form, for CDL to add and manage in the NZ.
To date, 188 OA monographs have been added to the NZ for systemwide access through this pilot! We also remind campuses that if they would like to submit a bulk list, you can contact [email protected] directly without using the request form.
As a reminder, any request for a collection of books over 10 titles has always been available to submit to CDL for CDL cataloging via the Cataloging a New Collection request form. Requests for activating CZ open access collections can also be requested to CDL via this form. Other useful forms include requests for Cataloging Individual OA Journal Titles, and Adding Individual CalDocs Titles (CalDocs must also already be cataloged in OCLC).
Highlights on other activities
Due to how the vendor digitizes issues, journals in the Biodiversity Heritage Library collections may have gaps in coverage and long holdings statements in UC Library Search. CDL is aware of this, Ex Libris and BHL are not able to make adjustments to these holdings statements. CDL is considering options; however, overriding the holdings with blanket coverage statements would make them inaccurate and potentially result in false availability in the catalog.
ASME ebooks have been cleaned up and reorganized in the NZ. If users encounter any issues, please submit a ticket to CDL Helpline.
Report an Alma/Primo VE problem: This page outlines how and when campuses should report access issues to CDL. This page can be found under CDL’s Report a Problem page under “Report a SILS (Alma or Primo VE) Problem”
]]>As a reminder, these office hours are held on the second Thursday of every month, from 10am-11am PT, and are intended to be times for any WEST member to come ask questions or discuss what they’re working on for WEST with the WEST Project Team and other WEST members. Our hope is that this can be another resource to support your work in WEST and that this will provide a place for us to come together and learn from each other as a community in a more informal setting.
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CDL is very pleased to welcome Li Ma as Assistant Director of Systemwide Licensing! Li begins this management position in Shared Collections on February 9, 2026.
Li brings extensive academic library experience spanning licensing, budgeting, and technical services, which has prepared her well for her new role at CDL. Most recently serving as Associate Director for Content & Discovery at Duke University’s Medical Center Library, she led an integrated department responsible for collection development, technical services, and access services. Her achievements include negotiating numerous contracts with favorable terms and partnering with the main campus library to implement a new library system and launch a new course reserve service, while continuously driving workflow improvements and staff development.
Throughout her career, Li has developed strong expertise across the complete resource lifecycle. Her experience managing electronic resources in large, complex, multi-campus environments has provided valuable perspective on the scale and interdependencies of resource management. She previously served as e-Resource & Serials Librarian at the University of South Carolina, where she led lifecycle management of extensive electronic journal portfolios across multiple campuses and consortia, focusing on workflow efficiency, optimization, and staff training.
Li brings deep expertise with integrated library systems, having successfully led various components of several system implementations including Alma at multiple institutions. She continuously leverages these systems to drive ongoing workflow improvements and operational efficiency.
Li is committed to staff development through shared problem-solving, knowledge exchange, and continuous learning. She creates opportunities for cross-functional collaboration that expand expertise and enhance user experience while providing consistent mentoring and support.
An active contributor to the professional library community, Li’s professional interests include collection development and management, scholarly communication, and team and staff development.
In her free time, Li enjoys reading, hiking, and cooking.
We are excited that Li is joining CDL and look forward to working with her.
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hris Groskopf is an interdisciplinary technologist who enjoys solving curious problems. He has spent most of his career working in journalism, at publications including the Chicago Tribune, NPR, and FiveThirtyEight. More recently, Chris spent two years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where he led a team developing data-driven products to empower the public to make informed health decisions.
Chris is a parent, omnivorous reader, small-dollar art collector, amateur historian, family genealogist, mediocre ukulele player, and occasional plastic rock climber. Chris lives in Oakland, California. Last year he checked out more than 800 books from the public library.
]]>All content for this database can be found at the Alexander Press Street Platform at the following URL: https://search.alexanderstreet.com/wass
For detailed information about the content updates for this product over the last several years, visit Content Updates for Women and Social Movements in the U.S., 1600–2000.
Fun Fact: This product has connections to the University of California! From the site:
In January 2019, Professors Rebecca Jo Plant of UC San Diego and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu of UC Irvine assumed editorial responsibility for Women and Social Movements in the United States. In July 2024, Patricia Schechter of Portland State University succeeded them as website editor.
The first half of the webinar covered the history of WEST as well as the vision, mission, and principles, key features of the program, an overview of WEST members and their roles, how WEST is governed, and WEST’s external collaborations with key partners that extend our work at a national scale.
The second half of the webinar provided a brief overview of the collection analysis and archiving processes, a look into the different roles members play in WEST, information on the WEST collection, and information about WEST’s in-house analysis support and decision making tool AGUA. As part of the program refresher, WEST project staff also gave a demo of the On Demand Comparison Report Tool and the new On Demand Analytics Report Tool, with two use cases and information on when you might use each tool.
- Use case #1: How to use the On Demand Comparison Report Tool to support a deselection project targeted at a specific shelf range.
- Use case #2: How to use the On Demand Analytics Report Tool to identify titles held by WEST members who are also members of a given resource sharing network.
The recording of the demo and presentation slide deck are now available in the Webinars section of the Documents & Presentations page of the WEST website: https://cdlib.org/west/about-west/documents-presentations/#webinars
Thank you to everyone who was able to join us!
]]>Welcome to the Merritt service update for January 2026
Content and Collections
The following collections were actively being expanded upon during the month of January:
- University and Jepson Herbaria Image Archive
- UC Berkeley School of Law, Robbins Collection
- UC Berkeley Library Kransky Collection
- UC Berkeley Library Bancroft Collections
- UC Berkeley Library Humanities & Social Sciences
- UC Merced Library McDaniel (Wilma E.) Papers
- UC Riverside Library Nuxeo collection
- UCSC Library Special Collections
- UCSC Library Cabrillo Music Festival Collection
- UCSC Library Hayden White Papers MS323
- UCSC Library Audio Collection UA046
Digital Preservation Community
Collaborative Good Practices for Digital Preservation in the Cloud
At iPRES 2025 the Merritt team collaborated with APTrust on a workshop regarding digital preservation practices in the cloud. The workshop involved three, rotating breakout sessions focused on preservation activities, DevOps and FinOps. Participants cycled through each breakout to discuss both specific prompts as well as their experiences with the topic at hand. During the these discussions, participants were also asked to record points of interest in a collaborative, shared “good practices” document. Post-conference, we continued to collaborate around this document which was published via UVA’s LibraOpen platform for public access. It will also be included in forthcoming iPRES proceedings. It is currently available here!
What We’re Working On
As noted in our prior update, the Merritt team is running full steam ahead on its effort to containerize the repository as a whole. We are preparing to move Merritt’s user interface web application into containers and will then proceed with moving its fixity checking (Audit) and Replication services. Please have a look at our UC3 New Year series blog post on digital preservation that reviews a sampling of the team’s upcoming efforts for 2026, including this one!
Repository Metrics for January
Holdings Snapshot
| Holdings as of July 1, 2025, fiscal year start: | 584.00 TB (one copy) |
| Holdings as of January 29, 2026 |
604.2 TB (one copy) |
Active collections in January (new files added – a single digital object can contain one or more files):
| eScholarship | 15,999 |
| University and Jepson Herbaria Image Archive | 2,651 |
| UC Berkeley School of Law, Robbins Collection | 1,748 |
| UC Berkeley Library Kransky Collection | 3,647 |
| UC Berkeley Library Bancroft Collections | 1,450 |
| UC Berkeley Library Humanities & Social Sciences | 84,212 |
| UC Merced Library McDaniel (Wilma E.) Papers | 8,011 |
| UC Riverside Library Nuxeo collection | 2,130 |
| UCSC Library Special Collections | 4,686 |
| UCSC Library Cabrillo Music Festival Collection | 6,932 |
| UCSC Library Hayden White Papers MS323 | 42,370 |
| UCSC Library Audio Collection UA046 | 2,182 |
Useful Links
Learn more about Merritt and the team that’s advancing CDL’s digital preservation repository.
Merritt Policies and User Guidelines
Merritt Preservation Repository
Find the team on GitHub!
Terrence Brady Senior Developer and Technical Lead
David Loy Senior Developer
Mark Reyes Senior Developer
Eric Lopatin Merritt Product Manager (at CDL)
Contact Us
Merritt administrators may be contacted at [email protected]. Sending a message will automatically open a new issue in CDL’s internal ticketing system.
To report an urgent problem with Merritt, call the CDL Help Line at (510) 987-0555.Merritt Digital Preservation Repository
]]>The University of California users now have access to 2002-2025 ebooks from the International Water Association (IWA). Term access (not perpetual) to these books has been granted by the publisher, in association with the UC’s journal access.
From IWA Publishing: IWA Publishing eBooks Collection provides essential information on all aspects of water-related research with content applicable for students, researchers, and practicing engineers.
Access to these books can be found at: https://iwaponline.com/
CDL is working on processing these books, along with IWA’s open access ebooks, in the catalog for discovery. Enjoy!
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Photo by Caleb Jones on Unsplash
The University of California (UC) Libraries have released a new report, Advancing Open Monograph Opportunities at UC, outlining a values-based framework, key recommendations, and practical strategies for advancing open access (OA) monograph publishing. Developed within UC, the report is intended to inform and support conversations within the library and scholarly communication communities about how scholarly monographs—particularly in the arts, humanities, and social sciences (AHSS)—can be made more open, equitable, and sustainable. The report synthesizes the current landscape of OA monograph publishing and presents a framework including investment strategies and tactics that are grounded in shared scholarly values.
The framework builds on UC Libraries’ earlier work, including the 2018 Pathways to Open Access toolkit, which examined open publishing models for journals. This new analysis focuses specifically on the distinct challenges and opportunities of OA monographs and on the practical realities of supporting authors and OA book publishers at scale. It describes a publishing environment that remains fragmented, shaped by diverse publisher types, uneven infrastructure, and a wide range of business and funding models that continue to evolve. “The University of California has been at the forefront of Open Access innovation for the past decade, and I am excited that we are taking a next step to explore how we might expand support for OA monographs,” said Lidia Uziel, Associate University Librarian at UC Santa Barbara and project co-chair.
Rather than promoting a single solution, the report advances a model-agnostic, portfolio-based investment approach. This approach acknowledges that no single model can cater to the diverse needs of all disciplines, languages, regions, or publishing traditions. Instead, it emphasizes coordinated investment across multiple approaches—guided by evidence, aligned with institutional values, and responsive to the structural conditions of scholarly book publishing.
Four core recommendations anchor the new framework:
- Strategic investment in BPC-based OA monograph initiatives that directly support authors and publishing programs aligned with UC research and teaching.
- Support for Diamond OA and free-to-read models that remove both author- and reader-facing fees while advancing bibliodiversity, multilingual scholarship, and community-led publishing.
- Strengthened partnerships with university presses, recognizing their central role as trusted stewards of peer-reviewed scholarship and their importance in the transition to open models.
- Investment in open, community-owned infrastructure and high-standards OA initiatives that support discoverability, metadata quality, preservation, and long-term sustainability.
These recommendations are guided by shared principles—scholarly excellence, fiscal responsibility, transparency, equity, bibliodiversity, and community stewardship. The framework draws on the OAPEN/DOAB classification of open access book models and is paired with a values-based evaluative approach designed to support clear, consistent, and evidence-informed decision-making.
The report was developed by the multi-track Project to Advance Open Monograph Opportunities at UC (2024-2025), co-led by Lidia Uziel (UC Santa Barbara) and Erik Mitchell (UC San Diego, UC Council of University Librarians), with members from across the UC system: Miranda Bennett (California Digital Library), Bryan Kehr (UC San Diego), Michael Ladisch (UC Davis), Scott Stone (UC Irvine), Allegra Swift (UC San Diego), and Erich van Rijn (UC Press).
Although written primarily for the UC Libraries, this public version of the report is shared openly to support dialogue, experimentation, and collaboration across the global scholarly communication community. “I am so appreciative of the work of the project team,” said Bill Garrity, University Librarian and Vice Provost at UC Davis and 2025-26 chair of the Council of University Librarians. “We have already taken steps to explore how the strategies in this report might be implemented in the coming years.”
Read the full report in eScholarship: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9r22k58w
NOTE: This article was written by Lidia Uziel, Associate University Librarian for Research Resources & Scholarly Communication at UCSB, and was originally published on the University of California Office of Scholarly Communication website. View the post here: https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/2026/01/advancing-open-monograph-opportunities-at-uc-new-pathways-for-the-future/
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