CDLINFO

The database provider, NISC, has asked the CDL to move to a new interface as of November 1.  UC licenses the following databases from NISC (Your campus may license additional databases as well.):

African Studies
Black Studies Database
Family and Society Studies Worldwide
Left Index
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
RIPM: Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals 1800-1950
RISM International Inventory of Musical Sources
Sexual Diversity Studies
Women’s Studies International

The new interface solves some long-standing problems with the current interface.  The primary reasons for the new interface are the following:

1. NISC has asked us to move to the new interface since this would resolve the majority of complaints they receive from UC users.
2. The new interface presents UC-eLinks appropriately.
3. The new interface allows users to locate Advanced Search easily.
4. The new interface’s use of tabs brings NISC in line with conventions used by other vendors.
5. Because of the significant improvements in usability, we want the end users to have access to the new interface sooner rather than later.

You can preview the new interface by going to: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/uc-elinks/uc-elinks_test.html and selecting NISC.

No changes are required on the part of campuses.

Now that UC-eLinks has migrated to Version 3 of SFX, the CDL has the necessary technical capability to share UC’s ejournal holdings with Google Scholar.  By doing so, Google Scholar will then be aware which journals and papers UC has subscribed to electronically, and will link to articles from those sources when they are available. Google Scholar will create emphasized links for those items in Google Scholar, which are included in full text.  If an item is not available in full text, the link will still appear, but in a less prominent location.  Both links will include the UC-eLinks services activated by the campuses, i.e., links to full text, catalogs, Request, etc.  The link will appear as a text string, and not as the UC-eLinks graphic.  To see an example of emphasized links in Harvard’s collection, see http://scholar.google.com/scholar/librarylinks.html.

Why do it?

Although we are reluctant to some degree to share our holdings with Google (less because of data sharing issues than with the way the linking occurs), we believe that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.  Titles only — not providers — will be shared with Google.  The advantages of sharing our holdings are:

• Making our licensed resources as visible as possible to our users; we want them to be used.
• The CDL has only been involved in Beta testing the UC-eLinks feature in Google Scholar thus far.  If we decide not to share our holdings, the UC-eLinks links would be removed entirely in January 2006.
• By continuing to partner with Google in this effort, we continue to be able to leverage the voice of the UC libraries with Google.
• Finally, a recent survey of the UC campuses reveals that Google Scholar is beginning to be used as a serious research tool in their libraries, and that some even have Google Scholar information pages on campus library web sites.  For the survey results, see
  http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/evaluation_activities/googleScholar.pdf.
  We want to continue to be involved in future Google innovations.

How will it work?

Margery Tibbetts will set up the process once with Google Scholar for the CDL and the campuses (except UC Davis, which has its own instance of UC-eLinks; Davis staff will set up their process). After that, records will be automatically updated every two weeks.  The new linking will begin for CDL-licensed resources around November 1.

Reminder: The Directory of CDL-Licensed Content http://www.cdlib.org/cgi-bin/directory_search will be retired October 31, 2005.  At that time, please be prepared to remove any links to or mention of the Directory in campus web pages or guides.  Users who have bookmarked the Directory will be redirected to a web page where they will find links to campus article database and e-journal lists.

Users who have signed up for Directory Updates via CDLALERT, informing them of changes reflected in the Directory, will continue to receive these CDLALERT updates.  Instead of appearing weekly, however, the updates will arrive monthly.  Users will be directed to a web page where they can see additions, updates, and deletions.  The information on this page is drawn from the SFX KnowledgeBase update process and changes made by the CDL and your campus UC-eLinks Liaisons in the preceding month.

Background

Information in the Directory of CDL-Licensed Content is currently being replicated in several places: in campus lists of electronic resources; in the Melvyl Catalog; and in local campus catalogs.  The UC-eLinks (SFX) campus A to Z lists are now available in version 3 at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/uc-elinks/a2z.html.  Version 3 has enhanced functionality that includes, among other things, searching by ISSN, category (or loose subjects), and journal title.

Most campuses no longer rely on the Directory, but on these other sources for verifying information about and accessing licensed content.  Maintaining the Directory is not an automated process; it is updated manually.  New digital packages have many titles, some held by multiple vendors.  There is a great deal of change and churn among the titles, with new titles and dates of coverage being added to and deleted from Directory constantly.  Staff time aimed at this labor-intensive process can be put to better use now that other sources duplicate most of what the Directory accomplishes.

What do you use it for?

An in-depth analysis of the hidden uses of the Directory was completed within the CDL, with remedies addressed for all issues raised.  Consultation with campus library staff has taken place, as well as an investigation of how campus libraries link to the Directory.  A survey of all users of the Directory to uncover other uses not yet addressed was conducted in April and May 2005.  The results of that survey are available at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/evaluation_activities/directory_usage.pdf.

To verify coverage dates for an electronic resource, the UC-eLinks/SFX A to Z list, which is updated on a regular basis by CDL staff, or Melvyl Catalog records, maintained by the UCSD Shared Cataloging Program (SCP) staff, can be used.  The UC-eLinks list can also be used to determine the part of a vendor package a title belongs to, and to link to the journal at the vendor’s site.

Results of a second survey, capturing the usage of the CDLALERT listserv for notifying recipients of changes to the Directory, are available at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/evaluation_activities/cdlalert_usage.pdf.

And more

The UC Electronic Resources Management System (ERMS) Task Force has recommended Ex Libris’ Verde system for managing electronic collections http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/verde.htm.  UC is still in negotiations with Ex Libris.  Verde will provide another place to find detailed information about e-resources (more information about this decision will be forthcoming).

Timeline

Last week the CDL released updated versions of the Online Archive of California (OAC) <http://www.oac.cdlib.org/> and eScholarship Editions <http://content.cdlib.org/escholarship/>.

The eScholarship Editions home page provides more visible access to various browse options. Most of the other noticeable interface changes were implemented to improve consistency across the services.

The scope of the migration primarily affected the software that powers the web sites; image search results and object views now use CDL’s eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) platform <http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/xtf/>.  All dynamic pages on both sites are now served up via XTF.  Other back-end improvements include refactoring the presentation layer to be able to better support interface customization and adding the ability to emulate the legacy search syntax.

Congratulations and thanks to all staff who made this transition successful.

The CDL is pleased to announce the appointment of the following CDL Resource Liaisons:

ArtBibliographies Modern (Tier 2) — Krista Ivy, UC Riverside
Bibliography of the History of Art — Susan Jurist, UC San Diego
Contemporary Women’s Issues — Sherri Barnes, UC Santa Barbara
18th Century Online (ECCO) — Michaelyn Burnette, UC Berkeley
Film Index International — Lisa Kernan, UCLA
Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Database — Gary Colmenar, UC Santa Barbara
GenderWatch — Dan Tsang, UC Irvine
Gerritsen Collection: Women’s History Online — Sylvia Hu, UC Riverside
Index to 19th Century American Art Periodicals — Susan Jurist, UC San Diego
International Film Archive (FIAF) — Gary Handman, UC Berkeley
International Index to Music Periodicals — Liza Vick, UC Irvine
Music Index (Tier 2) — Paul Machlis, UC Santa Cruz
PAIS International — Marcia Meister, UC Davis
SCIPIO: Art and Rare Book Sales Catalogs — Susan Jurist, UC San Diego
Women & Social Movements - Jane Faulkner, UC Santa Barbara
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts — Roberta Medford, UCLA

Each Resource Liaison serves as UC’s “resident expert” on one or more of our systemwide licensed resources, providing information on vendor performance and resource content to the CDL.  The Resource Liaison is also responsible for sharing information and soliciting opinions from colleagues regarding their assigned resource.

A full list of CDL Resource Liaisons can be found at <http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/rl/roster.html>

The University of California libraries are participating in a new partnership to build a freely accessible digital library with materials drawn from across the world.

The UC libraries will contribute books and resources in order to build a collection of out-of-copyright American literature.  With the support of Yahoo! Inc., UC library books will be digitized by the Internet Archive using a new technology that scans books at the cost of 10 cents per page.

The materials will be available from <http://opencontentalliance.org/>, the website of the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a global consortium that will build and openly distribute a comprehensive set of digitized print and multimedia content.

The OCA’s founding contributors also include the University of Toronto, the European Archive, the National Archives (UK), O’Reilly Media, Inc., Adobe, and Hewlett Packard Labs.

What if your library catalog was smart enough to offer good recommendations? The Melvyl Catalog Recommender Project is an experimental research and prototyping project that is investigating a number of technical strategies for making online public access catalogs easier to use. Using records from the Melvyl Catalog as a test bed, the project will determine the feasibility of implementing a variety of user-friendly features in future catalogs.

Funding for the project has been provided by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  The UCLA and UC Berkeley libraries, the Research Libraries Group, and the Online Computer Library Center have supplied additional data.  Learn more about the project on the Inside CDL web site at <http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/melvyl_recommender/index.html>.