Introduction
The UK Research Reserve (UKRR) is a collaborative distributed national research collection managed by a partnership between the Higher Education sector and the British Library. It allows Higher Education libraries to de-duplicate their journal holdings of a title if two copies are held by other UKRR members, ensuring continued access to low-use journals, whilst allowing libraries to release space to meet the changing needs of their users.
Phase One of UKRR showed the effectiveness of creating a shared collection of low-use journals, with eight Higher Education libraries releasing over 11,000 metres of shelving through coordinated de-duplication.
UKRR is now in Phase Two, and is continuing its work building a sustainable national research collection. Having received funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) for five years, it has the ambitious target of releasing 100 km of shelf space by the end of 2013.
