CDLINFO

a.  University of California Press eScholarship Editions

On October 28 the CDL released the first 500 University of California Press eScholarship Editions http://escholarship.cdlib.org/ucpress/.  Three hundred of the titles, many of which are out of print, are now available to the public; the rest are restricted to University of California faculty, staff, and students only.

The URL for each available title will appear in Melvyl soon along with the rest of the cataloging information. Records will also be in WorldCat sometime next month.  The books cover a range of topics in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences; quite a few are currently used in courses.

These electronic editions are made available through a CDL-sponsored purchase from netLibrary of 1,500 electronic book files on behalf of the UC community.  eScholarship, which supports experiments in the production and dissemination of scholarly communications, converted the books into fully searchable XML.  They represent another element of the continuing partnership between the UC Press (http://www.ucpress.edu/) and eScholarship http://escholarship.cdlib.org/ .

Features of University of California Press eScholarship Editions include the ability to:
-Browse by author, title, and subject

-Search metadata
—Extensive metadata includes author, title, one-paragraph book synopses, Library of Congress subject headings, UC Press subject terms

-Search full text
—Hit counts are displayed alongside the tables of contents (with number of times the term occurs in each chapter). When a book section is selected, the user is sent to the first occurrence of the term.  Each occurrence is highlighted in the text, with navigation arrows to allow for easy maneuvering through chapter and book

-Find a full citation, including URL, for every book

Although the website is the best place to find an up-to-the-minute list of titles available, a complete list can also be found on Melvyl by doing a title search on eScholarship editions (once the records are in Melvyl).

Titles are being released in stages. By Fall 2003 there will be 1500 books available online; about 350 will be available to the public, the rest will be limited to the UC community.  Major milestones will be announced in CDLINFO. Please feel free to link to http://escholarship.cdlib.org/ucpress/from any relevant pages.

a.  A & I Database Transition “Canned” Answers

The CDL receives queries and complaints about the new vendor versions of the A & I journal article databases via CDL Feedback or from campus librarians.  Jayne Dickson, CDL Information Services Analyst, who so carefully and diplomatically answers these, has created a web page where these “canned answers” can be found.  Your campus library staff may adapt these, when a response to a puzzled (or unhappy) library user is needed.

Many thanks to Jayne.

b.  UC-eLinks Activated on NISC Databases

After a test period, and additional development on the part of NISC, UC-eLinks was activated Thursday, October 24, 2002, on the following CDL-licensed NISC databases:

–Family & Society Studies Worldwide
–Left Index
–RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (1967 - Present)
–RIPM: International Index to Nineteenth-Century Music Periodicals
–Sexual Diversity Studies: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Abstracts
–Women’s Resources International

It has not yet been activated on these NISC databases:
–African Studies
–Black Studies Database: Kaiser Index to Black Resources

Since these latter two databases have records drawn from a variety of sources, more development work must be completed on NISC’s part before the links will be reliable for linking to appropriate targets via UC-eLinks.

c.  El Mel Tells October Issue

See the latest October issue of El Mel Tells for articles on Command Searching in Melvyl-T, loading the campus snapshots, and continued profiles of CDL staff involved in the creation of Melvyl-T.
http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/elmeltells/emtv1n4.html

The Declassified Documents Reference System (DDRS) has migrated from its original Primary Source Media (PSM) interface to a more fully functional GaleNet interface.  Gale involved CDL staff and the DDRS resource liaison heavily in the development of the functionality of the new interface.

DDRS is a full-text database of more than 75,000 digitized declassified documents obtained from presidential libraries.  These libraries receive declassified documents from the White House, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, and other agencies.

CDL pages now point to the new DDRS interface.  The CDL directory page at http://www.cdlib.org/hlp/directory/ddrs.html directs you to a specific address per campus that facilitates collection of campus-level statistics.  Campus addresses have been disseminated by CDL for use on campus web pages.  The old DDRS interface will remain up at http://www.ddrs.psmedia.com/ through the end of 2002 to allow other subscribers to transition.

Features of the new interface:

The new interface enhances displays and searches with subject descriptors (using an uncontrolled vocabulary).  The descriptors are important because most documents don’t have a true title, and because they often provide needed context. For example, a document about the Vietnam war may not refer to “Vietnam War.” A document discussing Secretary of State Kissinger’s point of view may refer to him only as “the Secretary.”
The subject descriptors form what DDRS refers to as the “Document Abstract,” which also displays in the list of hits.

The new interface offers both keyword and full-text searching.  Full-text searches Author, Document Classification Level, Document Title, Document Abstract, Document Text (the full text of the document), and Subject descriptors.  Keyword searches the same fields as Full-text, except it searches just the first 50 characters of the document text.

Basic Search and Advanced searches continue to be offered.  The Basic Search offers search by keyword or full-text.  In the advanced search, you may search title, keyword, full-text or source institution and also limit by date issued, date declassified, document type, classification level, source institution, completeness, and by number of pages.  The date limits include both specific date and date range capability.

The Results or hit list offers more complete citations, and it is easy to navigate between pages of hits.  Results are no longer limited to 300 hits.
The default display sorts by issue date, most recent first.  You can also sort by relevancy, limited to the top 200 records. The user may now view and print the page images in PDF mode (Adobe Acrobat) in ten page increments.
The text version can be printed only page by page.

The Help section and Search Tips are significantly improved, and the database is far more usable than in the PSM version.

A backlog of digitized documents is in the process of being added to the DDRS web database; currently, the database includes documents declassified between 1948 and 2000.

Please direct comments and suggestions about the new interface to Linda Kennedy, DDRS Resource liaison, at lmkennedy@ucdavis.edu.

New image search and browse features are now available at the Online Archive of California (OAC) http://www.oac.cdlib.org/ .

The image search and browse addition is part of a “soft release” since OAC will undergo a major re-design in early 2003; at that time, the site will integrate access to images, electronic texts (oral histories and documents) and finding aids.

The browse option is available from a link on the Image Search page.  This feature was developed as part of the Pacific Bell 21st Century Literacies Initiative at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Science.  CDL staff (Rosalie Lack and Brian Tingle) are collaborating with the UCLA research team to develop and test audience specific (for example various levels of K-12) webpages for accessing digital content.  More information about this project can be found at http://www.newliteracies.gseis.ucla.edu/.  As part of the project, a hierarchy of terms was developed and applied to organizing the OAC image collection. Currently the images are browsable by six broad categories: History, Nature, People, Places, Society and Technology.  This hierarchy system will allow for expansion, should the concept merit further development.

During the coming year, we will gather additional data about the utility of accessing digital content by doing formal usability testing of the integrated OAC website, and through the IMLS funded MOAC II project (mentioned in CDLInfo September 26, 2002.  MOAC II partners will use the new evaluation grant to examine the usefulness of digital resources for four selected user groups: K-12 teachers, University students, academics in the Humanities and Social Sciences and museum professionals, librarians and archivists.

a. Jacqueline Wilson - CDL Senior Associate for Shared Content

Jacqueline Wilson from the San Francisco campus will join the CDL for a year as a Senior Associate for Shared Content, beginning November 18, 2002.  As such she will be assisting with a range of Shared Content activities from project coordination to vendor and library communications.  We are grateful to the San Francisco library for loaning her to the CDL and look forward to her bringing a fresh campus perspective to CDL activities.  She will be located at CDL in Oakland full-time.

Jackie’s distinguished career as a librarian at UCSF encompasses numerous accomplishments and experience in nearly every aspect of an academic library.  She has served as both Head of Collection and Manager of Public and Information Service.  She is respected throughout the UC system as an active participant and leader in systemwide activities and the Librarians Association of UC (LAUC), for whom she served as President in 1993-94.  She is San Francisco’s representative to the Resource Sharing Committee, liaison to the Collection Management Initiative, has served on the Systemwide Operations and Planning Group (SOPAG), and has contributed to professional associations in roles too numerous to list.

Jackie is the holder of Certificates in Measuring Library Service from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), in Project Management from the American Management Association (AMA), and has participated in a number of other AMA leadership programs.  She received her MLS and BA (Anthropology) degrees from UC Berkeley.

b. Adrian Turner - Manager of the OAC Clearinghouse

On Monday October 21, 2002, Adrian Turner will be joining the CDL staff for one year as Manager of the OAC Clearinghouse.  The OAC Clearinghouse Manager coordinates the OAC Sustainability Project <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/lsta/>.  In addition to providing leadership on this effort, Adrian will likely contribute his advise and expertise to other OAC projects including the work to coordinate OAC contributors using vendors for EAD mark-up and digitization.

Working with public libraries in California, this project seeks to identify the resources needed to make available and preserve through the Online Archive of California (OAC) digital content created through LSTA funded projects and also determine what’s needed to scale the service to a larger group of LSTA digital content projects.  With funding from the LSTA, we are entering the 2nd year of this multi-year effort.

Previously Adrian has served as a Manuscripts Specialist at the UC Irvine Archives and Special Collections and most recently as Archivist at the Sacramento Archives and Museum Collections Center.  Adrian holds graduate degrees from UCSC in Anthropology and UCLA in Library and Information Science.

In its role to identify appropriate mechanisms for developing CDL shared content to serve UC instructional and research programs, the Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections (JSC) conducts surveys of UC subject selector (bibliographer) groups annually.  The responses to the 2002 JSC surveys are now available online at: http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/protected/jscsurveys/ [password needed; contact cdl@www.cdlib.org]
[You can also get to the current and previous surveys from the JSC page at: http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/jsc/
where the links to survey data are in the second half of the page.]

The JSC has created a summary table (7 pages) of the commercially available files recommended this year at http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/protected/jscsurveys/cdl20021.  rtf [password needed; contact cdl@www.cdlib.org]

Subject selectors from UC’s nine campuses assist the JSC by identifying the rich variety of resources in each discipline that benefit faculty, students, and scholars throughout the system. Recommendations include electronic journals, abstracting and indexing data, web sites, and multimedia resources addressing all formats metadata, full-text, images, numeric data, geospatial data, etc. from all sources.

Recommendations may be updated at any time as new resources are identified.

For background that provides context for the surveys and more detail on the survey process, please see:
http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/protected/jscsurveys/surveybackground.html [password needed; contact cdl@www.cdlib.org]

From the surveys, the JSC identifies and recommends to the CDL those resources that should be considered a high priority for acquisition.  From the JSC recommendations, the CDL develops its work plan for the new academic year.  CDL Work Plans are posted on the CDL Documents web page (password-protected) at: http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/docs/ .

The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) held the 12th International Coalition of Library Consortia meeting in Nashville on September 19-21, 2002.  At the meeting (as in the past) vendors are subjected to sessions where members “grill” them about a variety of issues, including pricing.  Two members of each consortium may attend.  CDL was represented by Director for Shared Content Beverlee French and CDL Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections member Lorelei Tanji.

The vendors “grilled” included:
Convey/OCLC Question Point (chat reference collaboration)
Digi-Net (chat reference vendor)
Films for the Humanities
Ingenta
Berkeley E-Press
Taylor & Francis
Books24×7
Sage
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers

The meeting included a panel on “Perspectives on Archiving and Perpetual
Rights” with presenters from ACS, LOCKSS, Elsevier, JSTOR.  There were discussion sessions on topics such as: coping with budget cutbacks, collaborative web reference, integrating libraries with course management systems, and building digital repositories (the latter session ably facilitated by Bev French).  And since this meeting occurred in Nashville, there was also a brief update on the Vanderbilt Television Archive.

a. Landolt-Bornstein: Numerical Data in Science and Technology (Diane Fortner, UCB)
CDL has added electronic access to Landolt-Bornstein, through Springer’s LINK book-series offering.

Landolt-Bornstein (Germany)
http://www.landolt-boernstein.com/

L-B is a unique high-quality physics, chemistry and technology data collection that brings a searcher the work of a thousand experts to his/her computer screen.  The handbook’s data coverage starts with the scientific data described before 1883, the first year of publication, up to 2002.

L-B represents all fields of physics, physical chemistry, geophysics, astronomy, materials technology and engineering, and biophysics.  Only evaluated data can be used as a basis for a knowledge base.

The first edition, one volume of less than 300 pages, was compiled by H. Landolt and R. Bornstein.  Six editions have now been published.  Compilation of the 6th edition spanned 30 years (1950-1980) and involved 12 editors and 550 authors.  As the 6th edition was being completed, the editors and Springer started a new approach, publishing new volumes and supplements that extend and complement the 6th edition.  Mostly the volumes in the New Series are dedicated to currently expanding fields of research and applications.  Today the New Series comprises some 300 volumes.  The online version of L-B represents the New Series.

Easiest access to online L-B is through its own Search system.  It can also be searched through the LINK search system, which would include L-B and journals.  L-B equals 10 percent of the LINK server. Searching is free to all. Full text (PDF) is for subscribers, currently accessible to all UC. Navigation of
L-B works best with Adobe Reader 5.0.

Discover the benefits of the online version:
1. Full text PDFs
2. Excellent readability of table of Contents
3. Clear and fast navigation
4. Searchable via L-B search-system in contents, titles, authors, or in text
5. Access to Index

Document, data files as well as the table of contents, are presented in PDF format. One may choose “Landolt-Bornstein Contents” from the homepage.  The navigation bar features hierarchically structured bookmarks for quick orientation. One may choose “Landolt-Bornstein Search” from the homepage to access the powerful L-B Search.  Ignore the LINK search sketch at the top of the screen and drop down to the L-B search box.  From the Contents page, access the Index by clicking on “Landolt-Bornstein: General Scientific Information and Tools”.  We have asked the Editors to make the Index a clearer, more obvious choice.

Topics covered by online L-B:
Units and Fundamental Constants (of general interest; equivalent of first 2 volumes of New Series)
Groups (materials related scientific data; 298 volumes and counting):
Elementary Particles, Nuclei and Atoms
Molecules and Free Radicals
Condensed Matter
Physical Chemistry
Geophysics
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Biophysics
Advanced Materials and Technology being added as Group 8

In Group 4 Physical Chemistry, one can choose to search “from” the Periodic Table, an ambitious offering. Links to Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Numbers are forthcoming. L-B online offers ready access to Binary Phase Diagrams.  There is a new volume coming out this year on Energy Technology.  And there are plans to broaden coverage in atmospheric science and climatological modeling.

To see online L-B in action, try this sample search on silver bromide.  Choose “Landolt-Bornstein Search” from the homepage.  http://www.landolt-boernstein.com/  In the search box, enter “agbr”. Click on Perform Search.  [Result returned.]  Refine search by entering “phonon”.  [Result returned.]  Further refine the search by entering “dispersion”.[Result returned.]  Choose to get the full text of document 1.  You will see the highlighted search terms in the return.

Data seekers will find that Landolt-Bornstein has an amazing wealth of information.

b. American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
The newest release of American Civil War: Letters and Diaries [www.alexanderstreet2.com/cwldlive] is now available to all campuses.

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries contains detailed firsthand descriptions of historical characters and events, glimpses of daily life in the army, anecdotes about key events and personages, and accounts of sufferings at home written for private consumption, provide an immediacy and a richness that are unmatched in public sources.

It provides access to over 1,000 sources of diaries, letters, and memoirs to provide fast access to thousands of views on almost every aspect of the war, including what was happening at home.  The writings of politicians, generals, slaves, landowners, farmers, seaman, wives, and even spies are included.  The letters and diaries are by the famous and the unknown, giving not only both the Northern and Southern perspectives, but those of foreign observers also.  The materials originate from all regions of the country and are from people who played a variety of roles.

Using a thesaurus of Civil War terms, researchers can quickly find references to individuals, battles, theaters of war, and activities.  A chronology of key events allows the user to see multiple perspectives surrounding a particular event.  Questions such as “Give me all accounts of letters written about hospital conditions by Union soldiers in the Western Theater” can be answered in seconds.

The collection includes approximately 100,000 pages of published memoirs, letters and diaries from individuals plus 4,000 pages of previously unpublished materials. Drawn from more than 1,000 sources, the collection provides in-depth coverage of all aspects of the war.  More than 1,000 biographies will enhance the use of the database.

The collection includes one of the most comprehensive bibliographies of Civil War letters and diaries yet published. It lists over 1,000 published and unpublished items from a variety of sources, including online resources and microform.

(Adapted from Alexander Street Press description)

c. Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI)
Note: Currently access via proxy server from the following campuses is not working: UCB, UCD, UCSB, UCSF, UCSC, UCR. We are working with their technical staff to resolve this problem.

In response to intense user demand, the CDL has licensed JNCI Cancer Spectrum.  Access is available via the HighWire platform; users may go directly to: http://jncicancerspectrum.oupjournals.org/.  (Also included are JNCI Monographs.)

JNCI Cancer Spectrum is the new online version of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI).  Now incorporated into JNCI Cancer Spectrum, JNCI is also a U.S. government depository item, but its online version is only available through Oxford University Press, which has integrated the Journal with other sources of cancer information.

Oxford University Press (OUP) excluded JNCI Cancer Spectrum from its electronic journals package to which the CDL subscribes.  The CDL has worked with Oxford for months to negotiate an arrangement that would have a consortial advantage for the UC campus libraries. Co-investments include the campuses and CDL, which is covering the costs for the small non-health sciences campuses.

a. Digital Dissertation Links in Ovid MLA
Links directly to titles in Digital Dissertations have been activated in Ovid’s version of the MLA International Bibliography.  When users find a citation to a dissertation in the results of an MLA search, they will now link directly to the record for the dissertation title, including citation and abstract and/or 24-page preview, if available in Digital Dissertations.  In addition to the 24-page preview, users will also get the complete text for UC dissertations from 1997 to present.

For example, a search conducted by MLA Resource Liaison Rob Melton (UCSD), “Foucault.mp and Novel.sh and dissertation abstract.sh” yields 13 dissertations.  (The Ovid codes translated mean search for Foucault as multipurpose keyword and novel as a subject heading and dissertation abstract as a subject heading.)

When users click the UC-eLinks icon, a UC-eLinks window appears with the text “Abstract or full text available from Digital Dissertations”.  By clicking here, users will go directly to the citation for the dissertation in question in Digital Dissertations, and if available, the first 24 pages of the dissertation; or if a UC dissertation from 1997 on, a PDF version of the full dissertation will be available.

To return to the MLA search results, close all screens from within Digital Dissertations.  From the orange UC-eLinks page, click on “close this window.” From the Ovid page, click on the blue box “Return to Ovid Session.”

While links to Digital Dissertations are not available from all vendors who include dissertations in their sources, the CDL continues to work with vendors to make links directly to the title possible.  For example, the CDL is working with Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) to make Digital Dissertation links activated in PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts and other CSA databases.  This requires development work on the part of CSA to provide the Dissertation Abstracts number in the OpenURL.  To enable links from RLIN and WCAT requires substantial development on the part of CDL since the DA number is not included in the bibliographic records, so will not be occurring in the very near future.

b. Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) – Version 6.0
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) has a new version of its Internet
Database Service, Version 6.0. (We are currently using Version 5.2.)

A decision was made to implement the change to CSA 6.0 on October 16, after
consulting with the CSA Resource Liaisons. One campus, UCSD, is not making the change to version 6.0 at this time.

The new version has these features and functionality:

–No limit to the number of viewable records
–No limit to the number of records available to Save/Print/Email
–New Advanced Search functionality
–Easy-to-set Limits
–View Marked Records option
–Fulltext links on each citation in the results list

For a summary of changes featured in Version 6.0, see
http://www.csa.com/csa/v6web5.pdf

Version 6.0 is best displayed with Netscape 6.0 or Microsoft Internet
Explorer 5.0 and above with JavaScript enabled. While it will work with
Netscape Communicator 4.7, some of the design changes will not appear
correctly in this version of the web browser.

Version 6.0 will be running in parallel with the current Version 5.2
through the end of the year.

An enhanced functionality of the new version is that for chapters in books
in PsycINFO, UC-eLinks will now be able to link to the title of the book
which contains the chapter, rather than looking for the chapter title
either as a book title or as an article in a journal.

c. Tightened Threshold Implemented for UC-eLinks Requests
CDL staff has been working with campus Patron Initiated Request Operations Managers (PIROPS) over the last few months to refine the records that are sent from citations in the A&I journal article databases to Request via UC-eLinks.  As a result, we have now implemented a tightened threshold for data elements in requests that enter our system through UC-eLinks.  The criteria now include the following:

Books must have: title or ISBN, year
Articles must have: article title, ISSN or journal title, volume number or issue number or page number, date
Book paper must have: article title or page number, ISBN or book title or journal title, date

If the above criteria are not met OR there is electronic full-text for the item, the Request button on the UC-eLinks screen is directed to a page listing the campus ILL services, and the user is encouraged to enter the data into a blank web form.  In addition, if the electronic full text is available for the item, users will have the option of entering data in the blank web form in case they do want the print copy for some reason.

Please note that, at the recommendation of SOPAG the volume and issue number were not included as requirements.  SOPAG felt that making the threshold too tight would be very confusing and frustrating for patrons.

We are very hopeful that the changed threshold will significantly reduce the number of seriously incomplete citations that get processed by Request and sent to campus interlibrary services.  Please continue to notify us if you do receive incomplete requests.