CDLINFO

a. Felicia Poe Moves Into New Assessment Coordinator Position

Felicia Poe will assume the role of CDL Assessment Coordinator beginning October 1. As a Service Design Analyst at the CDL for the past three years, Felicia has made significant contributions to the Melvyl Catalog redesign, the eScholarship Editions project, and the development of the CDL web presence, including Inside CDL and the University of California Libraries site.

In her new role as Assessment Coordinator, Felicia will lead the development of the CDL’s new assessment program, including the coordination of evaluation activities such as focus groups, user needs assessment, and usability testing.  Felicia brings to the position experience with a range of assessment methodologies, her well-known project management skills, and her understanding of user interface design.

Felicia’s assessment team consists of Laura Fosbender, Library Data Analyst, and Jane Lee, our new Assessment Analyst.

b. Jane Lee Joins the CDL

On September 21, Jane Lee joined the CDL on a two-year contract as an Assessment Analyst. Jane is a recent graduate of SIMS at UC Berkeley where she had been conducting a needs assessment and redesign the SIMS web site.  A former high school math teacher, Jane has also worked with Interactive University to develop use cases and scenarios for the Scholar’s Box.

In her role as assessment analyst, Jane will help plan and carry out assessment activities such as usability studies and surveys and will analyze the results.

Please join us in welcoming Jane to the CDL.

c. Eric Satzman Named Web Production Manager

Eric Satzman has accepted a two-year contract position (which officially began September 13) as the Web Production Manager. Eric will report to Steve Toub and will work with him to schedule and manage web production needs for CDL projects, and will coordinate the work of the web production team consisting of Pam Daniels and Robin Davis-White.

During the past year, Eric has been working at the CDL on a contract basis doing production work for a variety of web projects, including the CDL Brochure site redesign, the Inside CDL site, and the new Reshaping Scholarly Communication site.

Although many of us have already worked with Eric, it wasn’t until we went through the interview process that we learned about his special connection to UC.  Eric was the first student body president at UC Santa Cruz where a notable achievement was the selection of the banana slug as UCSC’s official mascot.

The CDL has recently become a member of Project COUNTER (http://www.projectcounter.org/), which is working to improve the quality and consistence of usage reporting in libraries.

Producers and purchasers of online information products have parallel interests in measuring and reporting the use of online resources in a consistent way.  As librarians, we want to better understand how the information we buy from a variety of sources is being used, while publishers want to know how the information products they disseminate are being accessed.

In order to meet these objectives, Project COUNTER has developed a code of practice to guide the recording and exchange of online usage data.

With its membership, the CDL will participate in the advancement of the project and can now comment directly on the further development of these guidelines.

The UC campuses will have systemwide access to a new business resource on October 1, 2004: EBSCO Business Source Premier.  At the same time, there will be continued systemwide access to ProQuest ABI Inform through August 1, 2005.  After that, the CDL license for ABI Inform will not be renewed.

The CDL has enlisted a UC Davis library staff member, Adam Siegel, to help with the transition from ABI Inform to EBSCO during the next few months.  He will serve as the point person for campus training and instructional materials, and will provide database search assistance.  His contact information is listed below.

Background

Last spring, the Collection Development Committee (CDC) asked the Business/Economics bibliographer group to compare and evaluate content in ProQuest ABI Inform and EBSCO Business Source Premier.  UC library staff had already completed an evaluation trial of EBSCO’s product and were familiar with its content, functionality, and search features.

The task force, with input from seven campuses, concluded that both databases have unique strengths and exclusive content, and provide complementary coverage of business subjects.  However, in light of current UC budget cuts, their recommendation was to transition to the EBSCO product in 2005.  The CDC asked each campus to comment on the potential transition, and their collective recommendation was for the CDL to begin a transition to the EBSCO product in lieu of continuing ABI Inform.

The CDL negotiated a Business Source Premier license with EBSCO that provides access at no additional cost over ABI Inform pricing, and guarantees price stability for the next four years.

Through SCAP funding, the CDL currently pays for ABI Inform as a systemwide license. Beginning on July 1, 2005, CDL will use these funds to pay for EBSCO Business Source Premier and will not renew the ABI Inform license when it ends on August 1, 2005.

Moving Forward

Campuses have two choices if they have an interest in continuing ABI Inform after August 1, 2005:

1. Individual campuses can license ABI Inform and pay the annual subscription with local funds.
2. If there is enough interest, the CDL will facilitate a Tier 2 license with consortial pricing and co-investment by the participating campuses.

Several people from EBSCO will be conducting training sessions, and they are prepared to begin training this month.  To set up training sessions, and to get additional EBSCO information, contact Adam Siegel, EBSCO-ABI Inform Transition Lead, UC Davis, apsiegel@ucdavis.edu, (530) 754-6826.

a. Early-American Imprints Series II

By Sheila O’Hare (UC Santa Cruz), Resource Liaison

The CDL has reached an agreement with Shaw-Shoemaker to license the Early-American Imprints Series II.  Each campus has the following options for linking to this resource:

• An indirect link through NewsBank InfoWeb list of services available at the University:
  http://infoweb.newsbank.com
• A direct link to “browse/simple search” screen:
  http://infoweb.newsbank.com/?db=SHAW
• A direct link to “browse/advanced search” screen:
  http://infoweb.newsbank.com/?db=SHAW$s_startsearch=customized

The resource provides searchable full-text and full-page image access to 36,000 American books, pamphlets, broadsides, state papers, and other print genres published from 1801-1819.  This is a full digitization of the microform set Early American Imprints, Series II, 1801-1819, which was itself based on the American Bibliography of Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker. The resource is being released in monthly segments over a three-year period.

The Early-American Imprints Series II was recommended by a wide variety of UC selector groups, endorsed by the Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections (JSC), and approved by the Collection Development Committee (CDC).  The license provides perpetual access to the databases for future generations of UC researchers.

b. SPIE Digital Library

By Deborah Kegel and Terry Vrable, UC San Diego

The SPIE Digital Library is now available to the UC community.  SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering, is the preeminent professional society in the area of optical technology.

The SPIE Digital Library is a comprehensive online tool for locating papers on optics, photonics, optoelectronics, and imaging.  Subject coverage is broad across optical technology, including astronomy, aerospace, remote sensing, biomedical optics, communications and fiber optics, electronic and medical imaging, lasers, microelectronics and micromachining, nanotechnology, optical physics, chemistry and biology, and signal and image processing. About 15,000 papers are added annually and are indexed by databases such as INSPEC, EI Compendex, and Chemical Abstracts.

The importance of these materials to a wide range of disciplines on all campuses compelled the CDL’s Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections (JSC) to recommend that SPIE be available systemwide.  To that end, the CDL contributed funds to enable participation by campuses who did not previously subscribe in print.  Nine campuses will also co-invest and share access to SPIE, including Merced, but not Riverside.

The agreement provides access to the papers published in the Proceedings of SPIE.  Retrospective content is being added back to 1990 for the Proceedings of SPIE, with an archive of nearly 200,000 papers expected by the end of 2004.

Also included are four journals: Optical Engineering (back to 1998); Journal of Electronic Imaging (back to 1998); Journal of Biomedical Optics (back to 1998); and Journal of Microlithography, Microfabrication, and Microsystems (back to 2002).

The SPIE Digital Library is hosted on AIP’s Citation platform and may be accessed at the following URLs:

1. SPIE Digital Library: http://uclibs.org/PID/40897
2. Proceedings of SPIE: http://spiedl.aip.org/journals/doc/SPIEDL-home/proc/
3. Optical Engineering: http://uclibs.org/PID/3965
4. Journal of Electronic Imaging: http://uclibs.org/PID/40870
5. Journal of Biomedical Optics: http://uclibs.org/PID/40869
6. Journal of Microlithography, Microfabrication, and Microsystems: http://uclibs.org/PID/40871

The agreement includes a shared print copy, which will be cataloged as a serial title with the volumes housed in the UC Shared Journal Collection at UCLA.  The JSC endorsed preparing separate analytic records for the digital Proceedings of SPIE.

The Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) is happy to report that a new web site, “Reshaping Scholarly Communication,” is now live at: http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/

The site has already received notice in SPARC’s Open Access Forum news and elsewhere.  Aimed primarily at UC scholars, the site includes background information and prototype services to assist them with understanding and approaching scholarly communication in new ways.

Services available include an extensive lookup table of price, impact, and use data for scholarly journals and model language for authors to consider adding to their publication agreements so they can retain copyrights of their work.  Under “UC Responses,” the site also links to the collective program and priorities of the UC libraries as developed by the University Librarians in spring 2004.

Many thanks go to the hard and excellent work of the team, led by OSC co-director John Ober, who contributed to the site’s production: Felicia Poe, Jennifer Colvin, Eric Satzman, Pam Daniels, Laura Fosbender, Ravi Gudipati, and Raymund Ramos.

Over the next few weeks the site will be announced to UC colleagues, including library staff, faculty, and administrators, and to others outside of UC working on the challenges and evolution of scholarly communication.  Meanwhile, and at any point, your comments and suggestions will be gratefully received.

a. Jacqueline Wilson Named Librarian Emerita at UC San Francisco

Jacqueline Wilson, Senior Associate for Shared Content at the CDL, has been named Librarian Emerita at UC San Francisco. This honor is granted by the Chancellor of each campus to individuals upon retirement who have provided outstanding service to the University.

Appointment as Emeritus requires “evidence of extraordinary and meritorious contributions to the fulfillment of the mission and programs of the University.”

Congratulations, Jackie!

By popular demand, the online newsletter El Mel Tells, a newsletter about the Melvyl Catalog, has had a name change.  Its new name is Melvyl Matters.  Check out the first issue at: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/melvyl/melvylmatters/

A current list of ejournals licensed by the CDL and each campus (except UC Davis) is now available at: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/uc-elinks/a2z.html

UC Davis runs its own SFX server separate from the CDL server used by the rest of the campuses.

The lists are created using SFX, the technology used for UC-eLinks.  Campuses can customize their lists, and when the next version of the software is installed at the CDL in late 2004 or early 2005, users will be able to search via ISSN, journal title, and broad subject category.  Response time will also improve with the new version.

Campuses will decide whether and how they want to implement use of the lists in their libraries.  The Heads of Public Services and Heads of Technical Services have been notified of the lists.

For questions concerning this service, contact your campus UC-eLinks liaison: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/uc-elinks/roster.html

Or, contact Margery Tibbetts (margery.tibbetts@ucop.edu) at the CDL.

Three new pages have been added to the UC-eLinks web site:
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/uc-elinks/

1. “Adding Campus Databases to UC-eLinks” describes policies and procedures for campuses to follow when they add OpenURL support to databases that are not administered by the CDL.
2. “Adding Tier 2 Licensed Items to UC-eLinks” clarifies when a Tier 2 journal package will be added to the CDL instance of UC-eLinks, rather than to campus instances. “Tier 2″ refers to those resources that are licensed by one or more campuses and not by the CDL.
3. “Why UC-eLinks and not direct access to the publisher’s full text?” explains why UC directs all users through UC-eLinks for ejournals rather than linking directly to the journal.

Seminar Series, a new service for UC faculty available through the eScholarship Repository, has just been launched at: http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/

Using the seminar series service, faculty can give their seminars, lecture series, and colloquia a lasting and highly visible presence on the Internet.  The seminar series service will host the full-text versions of papers as well as speaker and topic lists.

Seminar materials will be maintained persistently as part of the eScholarship Repository, which houses a collection of faculty working papers, preprints, monographs, peer reviewed journals, and other publications from more than 160 UC departments and organized research units. The eScholarship Repository receives as many as 15,000 full-text downloads per week.