CDLINFO

a. Marcel Dekker Journals (Julia Gelfand, UCI)

A Tier II contract beginning in 2002 for fulltext content to all journals from Marcel Dekker [http://www.dekker.com] is now in place for all campuses except UCLA who was unable to participate at this time.  The three-year license from 2002-2005 allows for universal access to all users for the entire journal list and supports remote access via proxy servers, allowances for ILL and will provide quarterly user statistics for each campus by title usage.

The list of 79 titles from Dekker spans the disciplines of medicine, the life sciences, physical sciences, and engineering/technology.  Specific subject content is found in: Agriculture, Biology, Chemistry, Dance, Earth and Geoscience, Engineering, Environment, Food Science & Technology, Library & Information Science, Management, Mathematics, Medicine, Pharmacy and Pharmacology, Physics, Public Administration, Statistics.

You can search the entire content of the Dekker collection by going to the publisher’s website at www.dekker.com or go to the individual journal and review the table of contents of a specific issue.  At the individual journal website information includes a full citation, an introduction to the current journal editors, a description of the journal in a brief scope note, and a list of where the title is indexed and abstracted.

Shared cataloging will be forthcoming from the CDL. Currently, the 8 campuses maintain print subscriptions to many titles on the Dekker list and will have to coordinate any cancellations with Terry Vrable (CDL Acquisitions).  Dekker also wants the UC librarians to consider online access to their encyclopedias later this year.  A permanent Resource Liaison will be assigned to Dekker soon.  In the interim if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Julia Gelfand (jgelfand@uci.edu).

b. American Society of Agricultural Engineers Technical Library (Bob Heyer-Gray, UCD)

The entire UC system now has access to the American Society of Agricultural Engineers Technical Library at [http://asae.frymulti.com/].  Bob Heyer-Gray (UCD), with the assistance of Karl Kocher and Sandi Grant (both UCD), negotiated a system-wide license for this resource.

Full-text access presently includes the following publications:

• ASAE Standards
• ASAE Journals:
  • Applied Engineering in Agriculture, v.15(1) 1999-
  • Transactions of the ASAE, v.43(1) 2000-
  • Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health, v.5(1) 1999-
• Annual Meeting Papers, 2001-
• Conference proceedings

NOTE: UC Davis researched the possibility of systemwide access to this resource and funded the marginal cost to provide it.  The CDL applauds Bob Heyer-Gray and UC Davis for this exemplary instance of promoting and providing university-wide shared content.

a. Usability Testing Begins on the CDL Interface of Melvyl-T

The campuses will begin conducting interface usability tests on an early prototype of the Melvyl-T database beginning the week of April 1.  The tests will concentrate on basics of the customized CDL interface to the Aleph system. Evaluation Liaisons at six UC campuses (UCSB, UCSC, UCSD, UCLA, UCSF, UCI) will test the search and display functions, and the terminology used in the CDL interface.  UC student participants at these campuses will be provided with a series of tasks to perform and will be observed and listened to by the usability test administrator and observer.  After working with three to four students at each campus, Evaluation Liaisons will then be reporting their results to the CDL.  Fixes for identified problems will be folded into the next iteration of the interface.

A second round of usability testing is planned for May, with Evaluation Liaisons from UCR, UCB, and UCD testing profile, registration, update, email, and fixes from the first round of testing, if possible.  A third round is set for June to test the changes made in the interface following the first two rounds of testing. There may be a fourth round of testing.  A roster of the campus Evaluation Liaisons is available at http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/education/evaluation/evaluationliaisonroster.html

The CDL depends upon this crucial collaboration with the campuses to improve the interface of UC’s union catalog, and is very grateful to the Evaluation Liaisons for their participation in this important venture.

Wider release of the Melvyl-T prototype catalog will follow these initial usability tests and implementation of the priority changes that they suggest.

b. MLA Update

It was announced in the February 28, 2002 issue of CDLINFO that the Ovid version of the MLA Bibliography would have an overlap period with the SilverPlatter version of MLA through March 28, at which time the MLA Directory of Periodicals via Ovid was expected to be available.

Ovid’s timeline for incorporating the Directory has slipped, so we have asked Ovid to continue running the SilverPlatter version of MLA through the end of finals at all campuses–June 18, 2002.  (Ovid Technologies and SilverPlatter have merged into one company.)  There will also be a Z39.50 CDL-hosted version of MLA running through June 18.  After that date, the Ovid (native) version will be the sole interface of MLA.

a. Alan Ritch Retires from Joint Steering Committee; Camile Wanat Appointed

The CDL will be saying good-bye to one of its most astute, eloquent, and tireless advisers with the retirement this week of Alan Ritch.  Alan served on the CDL Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections (JSC) from its inception in 1998 when he hailed from the Santa Cruz campus and was reappointed to a second term in 2000, this time representing Berkeley.  Alan’s unique perspective and breadth of knowledge have been invaluable in shaping a shared digital collection and in devising cost-share models that miraculously allowed everyone to participate. His leadership in collaborative activities for the University extend back many years before the CDL was born.

At the same time, the CDL is pleased to announce the appointment of Camille Wanat, Head of the Engineering Library at Berkeley, to the Joint Steering Committee through June 30, 2004.  Camille also has a record of collaborative contributions, recently completed a three-year term as LAUC member of the Collection Development Committee, and is the IEEE Resource Liaison.  Revisions in JSC liaison assignments will be announced soon.

The CDL Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections was appointed to advise the CDL on shared collections from a systemwide viewpoint and to identify and manage appropriate consultative and evaluation mechanisms (see [http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/jsc/].

Many UC librarians have wondered about the timing of CDL announcements for new resources such as e-journal publishers or databases.  In particular, they wonder why there is sometimes a lag between the time new resources are announced and the availability of cataloging records produced by the Shared Cataloging Program (SCP) for campus library catalogs, CDL Directory records, and links between citations and full-text items.

CDL has been working internally to coordinate better the processes contributing to the timing of when a newly licensed resource is announced.  We have done this both to understand the current situation and to plan how we can improve these processes.  A working draft of a document capturing the processes that reflect the various and complex dependencies is available at available at http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/announce-flow.pdf.

The ideal sequence is when CDL confirms that all the appropriate campuses can access a newly-licensed resource, the cataloging should be complete (and available from SCP and in the CDL Directory) and linking should be complete or available within a very short time period.  The resource should be announced in the next CDLINFO and posted on the “What’s New” portion of the CDL site.  In reality, this is usually easier said than done, and a balance sometimes must be struck between taking immediate advantage of the availability of a resource and creating the records and access paths to the resource.

There was a time last fall, when a particularly large number of new e-journals became available, and cataloging lagged behind some of the announcements.  Cataloging by SCP and for the CDL Directory are now caught up.  We are exploring some additional steps to speed this process up, including the following possibilities:
–Giving the SCP catalogers access to a new resource before access for everyone is turned on, so they can catalog resources in advance of the wider announcement
–Allowing campuses to get SCP records directly from UCSD on a weekly basis (rather than getting the SCP records from CDL on a monthly basis).

In a nutshell, the agreed-upon policy is as follows: SCP records for new packages will be cataloged as quickly as possible given the number of titles involved.  Ordinarily this happens within a few weeks after access is turned on, though some special cases (many titles, foreign language content, etc.) may take much longer.

If you have questions or comments about this process or suggestions for additional improvement, please contact Steve Toub, CDL Web Design Manager at (510) 987-0078 or Steve.Toub@ucop.edu .

a. Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Digital Library (Karen Andrews, UCD)

Berkeley, Davis, Irvine and Los Angeles now have a license for the Tier 2 resource SAE Digital Library [http://www.elecpubs.sae.org/NXT/gateway.dll?f=templates&fn=default.htm&vid=SAE:SAE2].  (Los Angeles and Berkeley will keep a current subscription to the microfiche papers for archival backup.)  Karen Andrews (UCD) negotiated the license for this Tier 2 resource.

The SAE Digital Library is an index (1906 - present) to thousands of SAE technical papers, journal articles, and standards covering all areas of transportation engineering including ground vehicle, aerospace, off-highway, and manufacturing technology.  Coverage includes fuels and lubricants, emissions, electronics, brakes, restraint systems, engines, materials, among others.  he SAE Digital Library provides the full-text of SAE technical papers published after 1998 and abstracts for papers published after 1967.

Please Note: The SAE Digital Library requires Netscape version 6.1 or better, or Internet Explorer version 5.x or better.

b. Bepress Journals

Twelve titles in economics from the Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) were licensed for all campuses by the CDL [http://www.bepress.com].  In addition to the valuable content these journals represent, the decision to license them was influenced by a desire to support bepress’ innovative models of scholarly communication.  The CDL Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections endorsed the acquisition.

The bepress publishing model is geared toward exemplary, rapidly disseminated journals.  The centerpiece of this approach is simultaneous consideration of submissions in a “family” of peer-reviewed journals, converting the archaic sequential submission process that traditional journals employ into an efficient parallel model.  The result is a reduction in time from initial submission to final publication of over 100 weeks (standard within the economics discipline) to an average of 14 weeks.  The bepress model has been firmly embraced by the academic community. Contributors include faculty members from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Oxford, among other prestigious institutions.

The titles include:
B.E. Journals in Macroeconomics (series title)
-Frontiers of Macroeconomics
-Advances in Macroeconomics
-Contributions to Macroeconomics
-Topics in Macroeconomics

B.E. Journals in Theoretical Economics (series title)
-Frontiers of Theoretical Economics
-Advances in Theoretical Economics
-Contributions to Theoretical Economics
-Topics in Theoretical Economics

B.E. Journals in Economic Analysis & Policy (series title)
-Frontiers of Economic Analysis & Policy
-Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy
-Contributions to Economic Analysis & Policy
-Topics in Economic Analysis & Policy

a. Article Level Links Now Available for Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals via UC-eLinks

Linking to the article, rather than journal level is a significant breakthrough, since CDL licenses over 1,000 Elsevier titles.  From a citation in a CSA Database, for example, a user encounters the Elsevier ScienceDirect fulltext link in the UC-eLinks pop-up window and it will now link directly to the article’s full electronic text.

From a citation in a CSA Database, for example, a user encounters the UC-eLinks pop-up window, which will now link directly to the article’s full electronic text.

This development will have an even greater impact as more of the transitioning science databases move to new vendors since Elsevier is primarily a publisher in the physical and life sciences.

Further information about UC-eLinks is available on CDL Libstaff at: http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/uc-elinks/.

A users guide for UC-eLinks is available at: http://www.cdlib.org/guides/ucelinks/.

b. CDL-Hosted Journal Article Databases FAQ Updated

The CDL-Hosted Journal Article Databases FAQ has been updated to reflect changes since the text was originally written, and now includes an expanded answer to the question, “How are decisions being made?” http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/a-i-trans/#faq.  This portion was enlarged to remind journal article database users, including library staff, why one database vendor was selected over another.