Imagine a UC library with more than half a million volumes, carefully acquired and protected, many of them singular or not commonly held by others in the world. Imagine the contents lining thirteen and a half miles from end to end—more than one Bancroft Library’s worth of material—but all of it invisible and inaccessible to users. That library represents the self-reported aggregate of the unprocessed backlog of special collections and archives materials owned by UC.

The UC Libraries have the opportunity to bring such a library online, and make its contents discoverable and accessible to researchers, within this next decade. The UC Libraries also have the opportunity to prevent the creation of such a backlog of newly created scholarly content, much of it in digital format. Collective commitment is needed to invest the time and initial resources to follow through and to capture these opportunities.