The growth of open access publishing, the development of institutional repositories, and the availability of millions of digitized monographs and journals are rapidly changing scholarly communication. This case study looks at the current and possible uses of these tools by Michigan's three largest universities: Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State University. The authors explore their usefulness in fostering collaboration within the University Research Corridor (URC), an alliance of the three universities, as a specific example of scholarly research collaborations. The study also examines whether any shared use of these tools would further the related missions of the URC as well as their member universities and libraries toward the ultimate goal of helping the Michigan economy.