Journal subscriptions are dropping for the majority of law school law journals. This drop could be attributed to a number of factors for subscribers. Many subscribers share the common concerns of budget issues, journal availability in online databases and the need for relevant scholarship. Law school faculty and scholarly journals have to find a way to provide scholarship to researchers. Dropping subscriptions normally means a drop in access and exposure. Scholarship without access and exposure is just a well-researched document sitting on a hard drive.
Institutional repositories offer researchers another way to access legal scholarship. Institutions can provide researchers direct access to the scholarship of the institution without subscriptions or other costs. This means access for a wider audience and a greater reach for the scholarship. The Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository currently provides free access to more than 5,000 scholarly works from UC-Berkeley School of Law. These works include Berkeley Law faculty journal articles, 100 years of California Law Review, the Berkeley Journal of International Law and the Berkeley Journal of Entertainment and Sports Law. In the future, the repository will grow to include access to all or nearly all of the journals from Berkeley Law and other scholarly works from the Berkeley Law faculty.
