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), it has the ambitious target of releasing 100 km of shelf space by 2015.