UC-AFT represents academic librarians working at the University of California. Our members include archivists, cataloguers, instructional librarians, system librarians, data scientists, and experts in digital scholarship and scholarly communications. We are stewards of the largest library system in the world, protecting California’s vital records and its cultural heritage. We are the engine that powers library collections, services, and spaces at the UC.
UC management fails to recognize the foundational role of its libraries in the teaching and research missions of our university. Decades of budget cuts and neglect of critical services reached a crisis point after the 2008 recession, and UC has been closing libraries as well as reducing the core staff of cataloguers, archivists, and subject specialists who make them run ever since. While student enrollment continues to increase, systematic defunding of our campus libraries has necessitated that library workers do much more with fewer resources. UC management’s unwillingness to properly fund its library system has made it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain the skilled and experienced librarians that UC students deserve.
Since UC-AFT negotiated its first contract in 1983, the student population has increased 215% while the number of librarians employed has stayed the same.
