Six years ago, the UCLA Library provided access to fewer than a dozen electronic journals. Last year, that number totaled more than 4,000. Numerous indexing and abstracting databases, reference resources, imaged collections, digital audio files and much more are rapidly becoming available online as well. This wonderfully accessible medium represents a culture change for both libraries and their users, and we are all learning how to operate in this environment.

One interesting question: How will users respond when a journal is available in both print and digital form? A recent grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the California Digital Library will enable us to study how faculty and students use scholarly journals that are published in both print and digital formats and how libraries can integrate and preserve them.

During this three-year study, libraries throughout the University of California system will remove selected print journals for which electronic access is provided from shelves and place the volumes in storage. We will then gather data, including cost and usage figures, for both formats of the selected journals and will study user attitudes and preferences when the primary use of the journals is through the electronic versions.

This study will help us develop a long-term strategy for how best to manage print and electronic collections throughout the UC. One option may be to provide universal access to selected electronic journals, with print copies to be kept in one or both of the UC's regional library facilities for archival purposes and other uses.

Another approach we've taken is to investigate new initiatives. Increasing amounts of information are being "born digital," in that they do not appear in a print journal but are published directly on the Web. The UCLA Library is exploring a new e-Scholarship initiative that would take advantage of the exciting new options technology presents for scholarly communication. Under this initiative, librarians would work with faculty to electronically publish scholarly journals and monographs, linked directly to the raw research results and/or citations that support them.

Of course, we continue to work on digitizing rare and unique materials in the library's collections. The Archive of Popular American Music is one of the largest collections in the United States, covering the history of popular music from 1790 to the present, and we've started to provide online copies of the sheet music in this rich resource. Scanned images of national, state and local political campaign materials dating back to 1908 are also available in the Online Campaign Literature Archive.

But digitizing these materials is painstaking, time-consuming work; with so many wonderful materials in special collections across campus, it is a challenge to select, prioritize and find funding to digitize those that will be heavily used.

The future of this exciting new area is virtually unlimited. We in the library look forward to working with faculty and students to find the most effective and appropriate ways of taking advantage of the medium.

Gloria Werner has been head of the UCLA Library since 1990.