CDLINFO

a. Merck Index Online

By Marion Peters, UCLA

The recently licensed Merck Index Online, an encyclopedia of chemicals, drugs, and biologicals, joins a suite of online databases available at all UC campuses that offer access to chemical literature.

Version 13.4 of Merck Index Online contains all of the content found in the hard copy Merck Index 13th edition, plus 230 new entries, as well as 540 entries retired from the 12th edition. The 11,020 entries (referred to as monographs) for single substances and related groups of compounds cover the following: chemical, generic, and brand names; CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service) registry numbers; physical data and literature references; structures and stereochemistry; toxicity information; and therapeutic uses.

The section on organic name reactions can be browsed or searched by keyword.  Name reaction descriptions are detailed and include both original and recent literature references.  Among the additional tables, viewable in PDF and included in a separate section, are ones covering selected abbreviations found in the chemical literature, conversion factors, indicators, and thermometric equivalents.  The Merck Index database is also structure-searchable with installation of a free ChemDraw plug-in from CambridgeSoft.

Teri Vogel, UC San Diego, is the new CDL Resource Liaison for Merck Index Online.  She can be contacted at tmvogel@ucsd.edu.

Two new issues of the Melvyl Matters newletter are now available, reporting on the good, the bad, and the ugly issues that arose in the recent Melvyl Catalog library staff satisfaction survey.

a. Beverlee French Will Retire March 18

After a distinguished career spanning nearly 32 years of sterling service to UC, the CDL’s founding Director of Shared Content, Beverlee French, has decided it is time to begin a new chapter in her life.  She will be retiring effective March 18.

Beverlee is a peripatetic and tenacious cyclist, which serves as an apt metaphor for her career.  Before arriving at the CDL in 1998, Beverlee’s career carried her geographically from UC San Diego to the University of Connecticut as a CLIR management intern, and then on to UC Davis.  She has traveled widely in her professional duties and expertise as well, starting at UCSD as a cataloger before proceeding to the biomedical reference desk, the science and engineering library, and, finally at UCD, to Associate University Librarian for Sciences and Systems.  Beverlee’s distinguished service on a staggering number of UC, national, and international committees and working groups culminated with her representation of the CDL and UC’s libraries at the International Consortium of Library Consortia.

Beverlee is perhaps best known for her pioneering work building digital collections.  She has defined practices that are now commonplace in universities worldwide while helping the UC libraries continue their support of world-class research and teaching in a digital age.  Systemwide, Beverlee has contributed important strategic and tactical direction to the University and its libraries.  She has also been a shining example of how effective collaboration, indeed, the continued good health of our system of highly distinctive libraries, is built from participants’ collegiality, integrity, openness, and mutual respect.   Locally, Beverlee’s warmth, humanity, and unfailing good sense have helped the CDL retain its youthful character even as it has grown and expanded its ambitions and responsibilities.

While it is sad saying goodbye to our mentor, leader, colleague, and friend, we cannot help but be delighted that Beverlee will have more time to cycle and pursue her many other interests.  Please join the CDL in congratulating Beverlee on her many contributions to UC and the academic community, and in wishing her well in her upcoming adventures, whatever and wherever they may be.

Although this transition is particularly difficult to contemplate, we look forward to recruiting a replacement for Beverlee’s role as Director of Shared Content as soon as can be arranged.  Needless to say, given the level of systemwide interest in this role, we expect to handle the recruitment in a consultative fashion, much as we did when we hired Nancy Kushigian as the Director of Shared Print.

In the meantime, we are making arrangements that will ensure that the ship of shared licensing and acquisitions activity stays a float and that Beverlee’s crucial roles directing shared collection development, shared licensing activities, shared acquisitions and cataloging, and the CDL’s intersection with the Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections and the Collection Development Committee continue to be occupied credibly and well.

b. Laine Farley Accepts Deputy University Librarian Position
In a related note, Beverlee French’s retirement had created a vacancy for the separate role of Deputy University Librarian.  The CDL is delighted to report that Laine Farley has accepted the invitation to take up the role of Deputy University Librarian effective March 18, 2005.

Laine will maintain her current digital library services portfolio as well.  Please join us in wishing Laine well in her new role.

Google Scholar has the potential to attract our users with its ease, speed, and relevance-ranking using cited references.  Although it is still in a beta phase, it has already had a profound effect upon our world.  Two recent developments related to Google Scholar involve UC-eLinks and the metasearch project.

First, thanks to Peter Brantley, CDL Director of Technology, a small group of academic library technologists have begun working informally with Google to encourage the development of information services that work in an academic setting.

One of the fruits of continuing conversations between academic librarians and Google was the support for open URL resolution services in Google Scholar.  Last week, Google added UC’s open URL link resolver, UC-eLinks, to Google Scholar.  As a consequence, faculty and students who use Google Scholar and are on the UC network can link from references to full text (where available) via the UC-eLinks page.

The group is now exploring the possibility of Google utilizing the journal data that drive the linking process. If this happens, it could enhance users’ experiences by permitting full-text access with only one click from Google search results.

However, we believe that many of our users will continue to need more specialized information environments than Google will likely supply.  Although Google Scholar may evolve to contain a large number of information resources, it will not likely present them in a manner that emphasizes authority, integrity, and selectivity, as well as ease and speed of access.

Although we expect that Google Scholar will fundamentally change the way in which we build and present scholarly digital libraries, we do not anticipate that it will mitigate the need for them.

Accordingly, the CDL will continue experiments with metasearching using Ex Libris’ Metalib product.  The approach is different from, and complementary to, Google’s approach.  Rather than seeking to search all sources at once, we are testing the value of creating more focused subsets of targets to search together.  These may be based on a particular audience, subject area, or format.

The CDL is also testing tools to bring in sources of relevant information via techniques such as RSS feeds, OAI-harvested content, and crawled web sites.  These methods are part of the broader set of site building tools that we are developing for libraries so they can select and present focused, curated sets of resources for their users.

These are exciting times for all of us and they continue to hold as many opportunities for our continued innovation.