CDLINFO

The Melvyl-T team has a new member.  David Sidlo is a computer consultant with extensive experience in systems development and programming.  He joins us to design and implement a test environment for the Ex Libris loaders and converters, and for the utility programs we are developing in-house for our new environment.

GPO Gate Ceasing Production

This is to inform users of GPO Gate that the University of California’s California Digital Library and the University of California, San Diego will cease production of GPO Gate on March 15th.

GPO Gate, a web interface to the suite of GPO Access databases, was originally created to overcome the early restrictions on availability of GPO Access and to provide a graphical user interface and simplified searching for our users.  Throughout GPO Gate’s existence we have continually strived to create and maintain a quality system that meets the needs of a broad range of users.  GPO Gate became the second graphical web gateway to GPO Access on August 1, 1995 and was later adopted by the California Digital Library as the official gateway for the University of California System.

For all of those who have been involved with GPO Gate over the years, it has been a terrific project and we thank you.  In particular the GPO Gate team appreciates the ideas, suggestions, and support we have received from our users.  This input helped to create a first-rate interface to the GPO Access suite of databases.

We are ceasing production of GPO Gate for a variety of reasons. First, we have found that we must spend an increasing amount of time and resources to keep GPO Gate functioning and available.  In addition, we believe the best use of our resources will be in the area of providing persistent access to collections of digital government information rather than gateways to information stored on government agency websites.  We believe that this focus will better meet the current and long term needs of our users.  The California Digital Library is committed to providing superior access to digital government information.  Examples of CDL’s digital government information projects include:

–Counting California (countingcalifornia.cdlib.org) provides user-friendly and integrated access to federal and State of California numeric data.

–Shared Cataloging Project, a collaborative project to systematically catalog California digital government information resources for access in University of California library catalogs.

After GPO Gate Ceases Production Please Select From the Following Methods:

1. To link to a suite of GPO Access databases:

GPO Access via Sailor: <http://gpo.sailor.lib.md.us/bin/GPOAccess.cgi> Sailor is a project of the Maryland Public Libraries.

GPO Access: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/index.html GPO Access is a service of the U.S. Government Printing Office

2. To link to individual databases:

See the GPO Access main page ( http://www.gpoaccess.gov/index.html ) and select from the Quick Links or the “broad topics” (e.g. Legislative, Executive, etc.) to search individual databases such as the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, etc.

For more information on the GPO Access databases or on government information please contact a government information librarian.

SciFinder® Scholar 2001, released this Fall by CAS, is available for downloading from UCLA’s Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry Web site <http://dirac.chem.ucla.edu/scifind>.  UC students, faculty, and staff need to install the SciFinder Scholar 2001 client (MS Windows or Apple Macintosh) or upgrade existing SciFinder Scholar 3.0 or 2000 clients.  CAS will discontinue supporting SciFinder Scholar 3.0 on March 31, 2002.

Due to the release of SciFinder Scholar 2001, CAS will discontinue supporting SciFinder Scholar 3.0 on March 31, 2002.

The entire content of Chemical Abstracts (CA) back to 1907 is now available for searching with SciFinder Scholar. Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) began in 1999 adding material from pre-1967 CA issues to its online databases.  The massive undertaking required converting to electronic form a huge volume of information that was previously available only in print.  With the completion of this project, researchers can search this earlier literature using words in the abstract text and title, the publication title, author names, publication year, and more.

Among the pre-1967 scientific literature for which records are now accessible are many studies in fields other than chemistry, e.g., more than 100 papers by Enrico Fermi, winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics; more than 50 articles by Albert Einstein; and definitive studies by E. B. Chain, H. W. Florey and Alexander Fleming, who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for the discovery of penicillin.

With the addition of 3.8 million records from pre-1967 CA issues, the number of online records totals 20.5 million records, spanning 1907 to the present.  About 789,000 of the earlier records are for patents, while 2,855,000 are for journal articles.  The balance of records are for books, technical reports, conference proceedings, and dissertations.

CAS has also added to the chemical substance database content.  Reaction information for organic substances now extends back to 1974 with more than 5 million single- and multi-step reactions.  Some 5 million calculated properties have also been added to substances.

Please remember to logout after completing searches; ports are still limited and are shared among the UC campuses. SciFinder Scholar is available daily except 3 - 11 pm PST Saturday.  Questions regarding SciFinder Scholar should be directed to campus contacts at: <
http://dirac.chem.ucla.edu/scifind/uccontacts.html>

a. UC-eLinks: Permeating the Databases

UC users of CDL databases will begin to see UC-eLinks increasingly as it appears on the transitioning databases.   UC-eLinks, based on the “OpenURL” linking technology being widely adopted in the library community, will eventually be available from the majority of the CDL’s journal article databases.  You may have already tried it out on Ovid’s MLA.  In early March it will be available in the CSA databases.  Later in March, it will appear on the Ovid databases Current Contents, Ei Compendex*Plus, and INSPEC, and in BIOSIS Previews when it is regenerated.

UC-eLinks provides a way to easily move from an article or book citation to the full online content of the item, or, for print materials, to automatically look for a UC library location of the item, or even to request that it be loaned or sent to the user.  It has the potential to link users to other services, such as author citations, web resources, and biographical information about an author.  It replaces similar, but more limited functions that have been available in the CDL-Hosted versions of journal article citation databases, all of which are being replaced by more technologically up-to-date vendor-supplied versions.

UC-eLinks is an example of the kind of global solution (rather than vendor or database-specific solutions) that the CDL is pursuing to provide better integration across resources.

A UC-eLinks user guide is available at http://www.cdlib.org/guides/ucelinks/.  Background information on UC-eLinks for library staff and access to the UC-eLinks test site for other vendors is available at http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/uc-elinks.

b. PsycINFO on CSA

PsycINFO [ http://www.cdlib.org/hlp/directory/psyc.html ] is now officially available via Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) along with the transitioning databases ERIC and PAIS, bringing together three important social sciences databases on the CSA database platform.  As of March 6, UC-eLinks will be enabled on these and all other CSA-licensed databases (campus subscriptions included–up to twenty-four databases depending on the campus).  The Transition Steering Committee endorsed turning on UC-eLinks for all CSA databases.

A UC CSA user will see a UC-eLinks pop-up window with links to electronic full text, campus holdings, and Request by clicking on the hyperlinked “UC-eLinks” after retrieving records.

c. Ovid Database Releases

It was announced in the October 25, 2001 issue of CDLINFO that five databases would be available via Ovid in January 2002.  That schedule as been amended as follows:

*CDL is committed to maintaining access through December 2002 unless there are unforeseen circumstances, such as vendors making significant changes to their data structure, or recommendations to remove parallel access earlier.

All Ovid databases continue to be available via the UC-eLinks test site at http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/a-i-trans/sfxtest.html.

UC-eLinks will be activated in these databases as soon as Ovid completes the changes needed. CDL will notify the Transition Steering Committee, Users Council and Resource Liaisons as soon as specific dates can be determined.

Please refer to the Database Status document for detailed information about which services (e.g., Request, Update, etc.) will be available and when in the new versions of all A&I transition databases. Available at: http://www.cdlib.org/news/databasestatus.html .

Directions for access to these resources will be announced closer to their implementation date, after the CDL has verified access.

a. Melvyl-T Catalog Unveiling Rescheduled For Fall 2002

There is a change in schedule for the debut of the new Melvyl-T catalog.  The new schedule is necessary because quality assurance testing is taking longer than anticipated and because several enhancements and developments that CDL has requested are part of a new release of the software from the vendor, Ex Libris.  The CDL will be the first installation site for this new release.

Current plans are for a small prototype catalog database of ~630,000 records to be made available for library staff and usability testing by March 2002.  The new catalog will be released to faculty and students in fall 2002.  The old version of the Melvyl Catalog will continue to be available for the entire academic year, 2002-03.  The overlap period is meant to assure the reliability and functionality of the new catalog, and to allow librarians and faculty a period in which they can learn to use the new catalog efficiently and create necessary training materials and guides.  (The Melvyl-T catalog rescheduling will have no impact on the A & I database transitions, which will proceed on their existing timetables.)

Initially, the database will consist of UC monograph (CAT) and serials (PE) records only, including those from affiliated libraries.  Therefore, users will have access to UC holdings as early as possible, while CDL and the campus libraries continue evaluating technical and policy issues regarding the inclusion of non-UC book and periodical records.  Examples of non-UC contributors for books include the California Academy of Sciences, the California Historical Society, the California State Library, the Center for Research Libraries, and the Graduate Theological Union.  The entire periodicals database, including non-UC contributors’ records, will be available in Melvyl-T before legacy Melvyl retires.

Several enhancements are being implemented especially for the Melvyl database above and beyond what is provided in the current Aleph software.  Some of these developments are a result of staff input to the Melvyl Library Staff Survey (”hidden uses” of Melvyl) conducted in summer, 2001.  Examples include the ability to maneuver among different display formats (including a review format), and the ability to view campus specific cataloging for each item in a set of equivalent records.

As a reminder, the new system will also allow users to do the following, which CDL is unable to provide with current technology:

• Combine books and periodicals (CAT & PE) in one database: Currently, users must search for books in the CAT databases separately from periodical titles in the PE databases.  For example, over the years, many long-standing conference series have been catalogued by some campuses as monographs, and by others as serials, resulting in holdings being divided between CAT and PE.  Merging these files together will better integrate the holdings of these important campus resources and address this frequent complaint.
• General keyword search: Currently, users can search keyword(s) within an index (e.g., keyword(s) in title). Keyword searching in the new database will be primarily subject-oriented, including titles, subject headings, notes, and genre fields.  Other examples of searchable indexes include notes, publisher, conference and others, some listed below.
• Limit search to electronic resources only: This would return only bibliographic records that have a link (URL) to electronic format.
• Phrase and proximity searching: The ability to search for words adjacent or near to each other (e.g., searching for the phrase “online catalog”).
• Sorting results: Ex Libris allows users to select and change the order in which their search results are sorted and displayed, for example, sorting by title or by date.
• Call number searching: A call number search will return an ordered scan display of call numbers and titles
• Multilingual character set support: The ability to sort and display using characters from languages (e.g., Chinese) used in UC catalogs.  Later enhancements will add a search capability on the vernacular fields.
• Music searching and display: It will be possible to provide better access to music materials by creating special indexes and displays that account for uniform titles, music publisher numbers, and other aspects of retrieving music scores and recordings.
• Browsing (heading searches): A heading search (e.g., author, series, subject) will return a list of headings. The user can then move forward or backward through this list, and scan and select the most appropriate heading, which will then return a list of bibliographic records that used that particular heading.
• Name and subject cross references: The ability to load cross references so these will be displayed in browse displays to aid in the selection of the most appropriate name or subject term.

Telnet access is likely to be available with the release of the prototype database and will also be test driven before the production database is released.

b. Functional Acceptance Testing of the Ex Libris System

On January 28, CDL staff and campus members of the Melvyl-T Services team started a 2-week first phase of functional acceptance testing, a process that reviews each function that was delivered by the Ex Libris system to support the new Melvyl Database.  Functional acceptance testing is an important milestone for the project because it analyzes where the system functions as it should and where corrections need to be made.  This first phase tests navigational functions only, against a test database of only 50,000 records.

Soon the second phase of testing will begin, against the prototype database of 630,000 carefully selected records (see new schedule information in the previous story).  The second phase will test all the indexing, searching and retrieval features, as well as re-testing navigational functions with more data.  This testing will be conducted by campus members of all the Melvyl-T Transition Teams (Database and Technology Team, Services Team, and Education and Usability Team), and by all staff members at CDL.

The Ex Libris out-of-the-box interface is being used during this testing period, but it contains all the indexes and database architecture that CDL has developed over these months of planning for the new system.  Parallel activity continues on the CDL interface that customizes this basic interface into something recognizably CDL’s, and which will be unveiled with the Melvyl Prototype Database.

c. MLA and Ei Compendex*Plus Now Available Via Ovid

MLA Bibliography and Ei Compendex*Plus are now available via Ovid. Users can access them from the “More databases” second pull-down menu on the CDL-hosted databases home page or from the Article Databases menu on the CDL Collections and Services page.  In accessing these databases via these pages, users will encounter an interim page that gives them more information about features of other versions of the database, and retiring dates for alternate versions.  Similar interim pages, recommended by the Transition Steering Committee, will be used for transitioning databases during periods when more than one version is available.

d. UC-eLinks

The UC version of SFX linking technology, dubbed UC-eLinks [see http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/uc-elinks ], has been put into operation on the first of the transitioning databases, MLA on Ovid. UC-eLinks will be activated on other Ovid, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA), and Gale databases as soon as is technically possible.nbsp; The CDL acquired the SFX software(http://www.sfxit.com ) from ExLibris as part of the Aleph purchase for the Melvyl Catalog and Periodicals database.

Initially, UC-eLinks will link to three services: links to e-content, links to holdings, and links to Request.  As with the current CDL linking system, links to e-content will be at the most specific level possible.  CDL Principles for development of UC-eLinks are available on the web http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/uc-elinks/principles.html.

The CDL’s first goal in using SFX is to implement and stabilize it in the transitioning databases.  Subsequently, it will be implemented with other vendors, so that users will see a consistent service from the databases CDL and UC libraries license.  While three linking services are currently being used, eventually there can also be links to author citations, web resources, biographical information, and other kinds of information.

For more information on CDL’s Vision for Services Integration, see [CDL Vision for Services Integration http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/uc-elinks/vision.html ]

a. Jon Solomon Joins Melvyl-T Team

Jon Solomon is the newest addition to the Melvyl-T User Interface team.  Jon, head of technical processing at the UCB Business Library, will contribute three days each week (Tuesday - Thursday) for the next 2-3 months on the Melvyl transition team.  Jon will work as an html programmer on the myriad interface screens that are being created for the Melvyl-T Catalog.

CDL has recently implemented a set of “status of services” pages that informs library staff of downtime, outages and related information for both CDL systems and for vendor systems of CDL-licensed resources.  The URL is http://www.cdlib.org/status/ (and is also linked to from http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/).

The highlight of this set of pages is a browseable, searchable archive of CDLALERT-L.  This archive contains all postings since early November 2001.  You may choose to continue to receive CDLALERT-L via email or, alternatively, choose to browse this online archive.

We are extremely pleased to announce that Daniel Greenstein has accepted the position of University Librarian and Executive Director of the California Digital Library.  He is expected to assume his new position in May 2002, and all are encouraged to help us welcome him to UC.

Dr. Greenstein is currently Director of the Digital Library Federation, based in Washington, D.C., a position he has held since 1999.  The DLF consists of 28 leading research libraries (including Berkeley and the CDL) that are pioneering in the use of electronic information technologies to extend their collections and services.  Through its members, the DLF has provided leadership to libraries throughout the nation by identifying standards and “best practices” for digital collections and services, coordinating leading-edge research and development, and collaborating to create digital collections and services that libraries cannot develop individually.

After receiving the Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Dan was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford University in 1989.  His academic career has included appointments in Modern History at Glasgow University, director of the Glasgow University Arts Faculty Computing Facility, and founding director of the Arts and Humanities Data Service of the United Kingdom, where he led the strategic and operational development of a digital information service to support arts and humanities research and teaching at higher education institutions in the U.K. Building on this success, he was named founding co-director of the UK Resource Discovery Network in 1998.

In his new position Dr. Greenstein will assume responsibilities for providing leadership to the CDL and, in consultation with the University Librarians and the Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee (SLASIAC), for systemwide library planning.

Beverlee French, CDL’s Director for Shared Content who has been Interim University Librarian since February, 2001, will resume her previous responsibilities for the development of the University’s shared digital collections upon Dan Greenstein’s arrival.

About 160 UC librarians brainstormed, reflected, and learned to insert active learning into library classes over four days in January and February.  The instructional workshops were led by Debra Gilchrist, Director, Pierce College, in the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington State and Susan Barnes Whyte, Director of Linfield College Library, outside of Portland, Oregon.  Both workshop leaders are also faculty at the annual ACRL Institute for Information Literacy Immersion Program, which several UC librarians have attended.  The workshops were held on January 31 and February 1 at Preservation Park in Oakland, and February 4 and 5 at UC Irvine.

Attendees departed the workshop having had active learning techniques modeled throughout the day, and as reflected in their evaluations, many apparently left determined to change the way they teach.  But the workshops were not all serious business-the instructors, following the model of the design company, IDEO, which they visited last summer, brought toys to play with during a brainstorming session (or rapid prototyping, in IDEO lingo) to help release participants’ brains to generate more creative ideas.

A website has been created that has additional materials to those in the packets distributed at the workshop, and where information generated by the workshop participants will be added shortly.
http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/education/instructionworkshop.html

UC’s long awaited Consortial Borrowing System (CBS), which uses Virtual Document Exchange (VDX) software from Fretwell-Downing, to combine workflows for filling interlibrary loan requests, provide patrons with new features such as the ability to check the status of requests, and facilitate desktop delivery of non-returnable items, is coming to your campus this year.

In anticipation of the CBS and its important contributions to resource sharing, the Request project team has been expanded and additional liaisons have been named at each campus to support implementation and ongoing communication.  In the last two months the Request Team has met several times with Fretwell-Downing to plan the installation, setup, and training for the VDX application. The team members have been collecting massive amounts of data to use in the initial setup of the system.  This application, to be implemented on a central computer at the CDL with participation by all campus ILL units, has been installed and is expected to be available for use by UCLA and UCSD in the next several weeks.

The CBS is to be implemented in three stages. In the first stage the CBS will be implemented at UCSD and UCLA.  In the second stage, UCB and all of the campuses with Innovative Interfaces systems will be implemented.  The third stage will extend the CBS use to UCSB and UCD.  Beginning dates for stages two and three are not yet firm.  Training for ILL staff at UCSD and UCLA has begun.  The two training sessions (one in the north and one in the south) for group two campuses (UCB, UCI, UCR, UCSC, and USCF) will be scheduled soon.

Claire Bellanti (Chair of the Desktop Delivery Subcommittee) reports that both Minolta and RLG are working on programming to make Ariel version 3.01 communicate with the scanners that campuses have purchased.  It is expected that these upgrades will be available to us in March.  RSC-IAG has prepared policy and procedural recommendations for RSC discussion.  These recommendations will help campuses provide consistent Desktop Delivery Service when the software is ready.

For information and updates on CBS implementation, liaisons, and time lines, please make occasional visits to the Request web site (http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/pir/).  A VDX questions and answers document can be found at this site.