CDLINFO

The CDL is pleased to announce the release of the updated Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) web site, accessible at: http://jarda.cdlib.org/

JARDA is a digital thematic collection within the Online Archive of California (OAC) that documents the experience of Japanese Americans in World War II internment camps.  Representatives from 10 participating OAC contributing institutions selected a broad range of primary sources to be digitized.  More than 10,000 digital images have been created, complemented by 20,000 pages of TEI-encoded letters, oral histories, reports, and other documents.  These materials are described in 28 EAD finding aids.

Previously, the web site was dependent on the Dynaweb system for access to finding aids, images, and texts.  The new web site preserves and amplifies earlier functionality, and now searches the OAC 2.0 DLXS system for finding aids in addition to the CDL METS Repository for images and texts.

JARDA is one of the first sites that uses the Interface Customization Tools for the CDL METS Repository, which allows contributing institutions to query the METS repository and customize (or brand) its look and feel.

We look forward to your feedback on the new web site.  Please send comments to oacops@cdlib.org.

Institutions can now access their digital collections in the CDL METS Repository through their own interfaces, using the newly released CDL Interface Customization Tools: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/repository/customize/

The CDL has been developing a digital object repository to support the collections it manages, which currently contain more than 150,000 images, texts, and other materials encoded in the Metadata and Encoding Transmission Standard (METS) format.  The Interface Customization Tools allow institutions to access their digital object collections in the CDL METS Repository, while using their own branding and customized interfaces.

Three IMLS and LSTA-funded digitization projects have already successfully used these tools:

• Museums and the Online Archive of California (MOAC): http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/moac/
• UC Berkeley Bancroft Library California Heritage: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/calheritage/
• Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA): http://jarda.cdlib.org/

What are the Interface Customization Tools?

Using the documentation, templates, and training the CDL provides in the form of a tool kit, institutions will be able to provide web access to their content in the way they choose.

Who can use the tools?

At present, any contributor to the CDL METS Repository or any UC library may customize the presentation of the repository for non-commercial use.  Open Archives Initiative (OAI) service providers can harvest items and provide services in their own environment.  All metadata is compliant with OAI-PMH 2.0.

Can the interface of all types of collections be customized?

Image collections and metadata-only searches are currently available.  The ability to fully customize the presentation of TEI-encoded texts, EAD-encoded finding aids, and DDI-encoded data sets will be added in early 2005.

What skills are required to do this?

General web design and development skills (knowledge of HTML and web forms) and XSLT programming stills are needed to use the tool kit.

For more information, see: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/repository/customize/

The CDL has established an Office of Scholarly Communication in response to:

• the continuing economic crises in scholarly communication;
• the growing concern about the impacts of those crises on UC;
• the broadening desire to assist scholars in the use of sustainable means of scholarly communication; and
• the need to support the UC libraries as they implement collaborative strategies to address these crises and opportunities.

The office will house the eScholarship program, supplementing it with broader planning, research, and outreach capacity.  It will be led by co-directors Catherine Candee and John Ober and will benefit from the contributions of other CDL staff.

As Director for Publishing and Strategic Initiatives, Catherine will retain responsibility for establishing alternative publishing venues, and for surfacing innovative means of using information technology in the scholarly communication process.

As Director for Policy, Planning, and Outreach, John will facilitate planning and policy development, and will help ensure that the UC community is informed about the dimensions of the scholarly communications crises.  John will also retain his current communications role for the CDL.

The latest issue of El Mel Tells, the newsletter for the Melvyl Catalog, is posted online at: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/melvyl/elmeltells/

Articles include:

• Searching for Authors…Truncation a Must in Exact Author Search
• Recent (Small) Changes to Melvyl
• Melvyl Formats — More Clarity
• Got an Idea for an Article?

a. Suzanne Samuel is the new Digital Preservation Project Manager

Since last fall, Suzanne Samuel has been devoting a growing percentage of her time to the CDL’s preservation program, an arrangement devised to free her up to serve ultimately as its full-time project manager.  That time has arrived, and on April 1 this transition was formally completed.  Suzanne has (meticulously) transferred her eScholarship program coordinator responsibilities and assumed her new role as Project Manager, Digital Preservation, reporting to Trisha Cruse. Suzanne will surely bring to her preservation work the same intelligence and conscientiousness that she invested in eScholarship. Congratulations, Suzanne!

b. Dayna Holz Joins the CDL

The CDL is very pleased to welcome Dayna Holz, who began working with us on the eScholarship Repository on April 1.  Dayna came to us via bepress to work half-time on the eScholarship Repository’s newest program — an open-access post-print repository for UC faculty authors.

Dayna is concurrently employed at UC Berkeley’s Environmental Design Archives, where she manages image digitization projects, creates metadata using GenDB, does original cataloging, encodes finding aids, maintains web pages, and processes and inventories personal and faculty papers.  Dayna has recently completed her graduate studies in information science with a focus on archives and copyright law; she will be at the CDL on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The Current Contents database has been added to the list of two other journal article databases (the Computer Database and National Newspaper Index) that are being deselected by the UC libraries.  Current Contents will be cancelled as of January 2005.  The Computer Database and the National Newspaper Index will be cancelled as of July 2004.

These cuts are necessary because the UC Resource Sharing Fund was reduced substantially for 2003/04 and subsequent years. The UC campus libraries made their decisions under the direction of the University Librarians in consultation with the Collection Development Committee (CDC) and the CDL Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections (JSC).

There is a 100 percent content overlap of Current Contents in the larger Web of Science database (both Current Contents and Web of Science are ISI databases).  Users who search Current Contents will get much more content by searching Web of Science.

The CDL and Resource Liaison Beth Weil (UC Berkeley) have negotiated for free alerts and additional ports in Web of Science. Beth is analyzing turn away data before the final group of ports is allocated.  Information about setting up alerts is available at: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/instruct/alerts.html

See http://www.cdlib.org/inside/collect/deselection.html for more detailed information.