CDLINFO

Founded in 1995, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is a dynamic, community-maintained, digital-only reference work.

SEP currently contains more than 750 entries in 35 subject areas, including philosophy of science, aesthetics, history of ideas, feminism, ethics (theoretical and applied), social and political philosophy, and logic.  New entries and updates are added on a regular basis and the final edition will have 1,074 commissioned entries.  A prestigious board of editors rigorously referees all new entries and updates.  More than 1,000 authors and 100 subject editors contribute their expertise free of charge.  Because its content is readily accessible via popular web search engines such as Google, SEP is widely used by scholars, students and the general public.  The encyclopedia is accessed more than 300,000 times per week on its principal website at Stanford University and three mirror sites at universities in Sydney, Amsterdam, and Leeds.

This resource is a unique, transformative model for scholarly publishing.  All 10 UC campuses agreed to support SEP by joining Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy International Association (SEPIA), a membership organization of libraries throughout the world.  To cover the annual costs of administering and supporting this volunteer effort, Stanford University has partnered with the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET), the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), and Indiana University Libraries for the purpose of building a protected operating fund for the SEP.  While the library organizations through memberships in SEPIA attempt to raise $3 million for the SEP over the course of three years (primarily from libraries at academic institutions offering degrees in philosophy), Stanford hopes to raise $1.125 million from private individuals and corporations during that same time period.  The SEP would then live off the interest on that $4.125 million fund.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has endorsed and supported Stanford’s efforts by awarding the library organizations (SOLINET, ICOLC, and SPARC) a $500,000 Challenge Grant in December 2004.  Library organizations have raised $1.5 million from their member libraries (i.e., half of their $3 million goal) and the NEH has contributed $500,000, bringing the libraries to two-thirds of their fund-raising goal.

Nearly 40 University of California professors have contributed to SEP, and several serve on the Editorial Board. In December 2005, SEP was awarded “Best Content” by the Charleston Advisor.

Worldwide access is at http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html.

By Emily Stambaugh (Resource Liaison), UC Riverside

The eDuke Scholarly Collection has transitioned from Ingenta to Highwire, effective January 1, 2006.  Early activation began December 15, 2005 and was completed by the end of the year for all campuses. Duke University Press representatives expect that usage data will be more reliable and Counter-compliant through the Highwire service.

The eDuke Scholarly Collection consists of 29 titles published by Duke University Press:

• American Literary Scholarship
• American Literature
• American Speech
• boundary 2
• Camera Obscura
• Common Knowledge
• Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East
• differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies
• Eighteenth-Century Life
• Ethnohistory
• French Historical Studies
• GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
• Hispanic American Historical Review
• History of Political Economy
• Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law
• Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies
• Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (new in 2004)
• Mediterranean Quarterly
• MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly
• New German Critique (new in 2006)
• Pedagogy: critical approaches to teaching literature, language, culture, and composition
• Poetics Today
• positions: east asia cultures critique
• Public Culture
• Radical History Review
• Social Science History
• Social Text
• South Atlantic Quarterly
• Theater

Titles published by Duke University Press that are not part of the package include:

• Neuro-oncology. Available Dec. 15, 2005 on Highwire.
• Duke mathematical journal. Libraries may gain access through Project Euclid.  Backfile access can also be subscribed to, with a 20-year maintenance period (Duke University Press’s best effort at perpetual access).
• Philosophical Review (ISSN 00318108).  Currently published by the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University.  Duke University Press will publish and distribute it through Highwire in 2006.
• Publication of the American Dialectic Society (PADS).  This annual is only offered in print and comes with American Speech, which is in the package.  No plans to publish it electronically.

Titles that have changed publication status.

• Neptantla: Views from South. Duke University Press ceased publication in 2003.  Earlier issues will remain on Project Muse.
• Duke gifted letter.  Duke University Press will cease publication in 2006.  This is a newsletter/web site for families and gifted students.

A new CDL web page entitled “Link Resolver Services for UC” is now available at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/linkres/.

The site includes documents, principles, specifications, assessment activities, and the members of the Link Resolver Planning Group.  It was built to include materials related to CDL’s and the Shared Cataloging Program’s (SCP) migration from a PURL server to OpenURLs for document linking purposes.

Thanks to SCP, Users Council, HOPS, HOTS, and the SCP Advisory Committee for input on this complex issue.

Want a quick overview of CDL’s programs, projects and services?  The CDL has recently updated its existing set and added two new fliers to the originals.  They are available for downloading and printing from the CDL Instructional Materials page on the Inside CDL web site under “CDL” at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/instruct.

• CDL Overview
• American West Project
• Counting California
• Digital Preservation
• eScholarship Repository
• eScholarship Editions
• Extensible Text framework (New!)
• Interface Customization Tools
• Melvyl Catalog
• Melvyl Recommender Project (New!)
• Metasearch Infrastructure Project
• Online Archive of California
• Request
• Shared Cataloging Program
• UC-eLinks
• UC Image Service

The CDL has begun moving the Melvyl Catalog to version 16.02 of Ex Libris’ Aleph 500 software (the Melvyl Catalog is currently on version 15.3.).  Previously, we anticipated that the upgrade would be complete by the end of 2005.  The timeline has been updated; the move is now expected to be complete by the end of 2006.  All enhancements to the Melvyl Catalog are on hold until after the update completion.

The CDL spent unanticipated time working with the catalog vendor, Ex Libris, to address a problem in the speed of loading the campus updates.  The importance of focusing on this issue overshadowed the move to the next version of the software. With two major fixes brought in, record loading has improved 40 percent since last summer (2005), when loading was at its slowest.

In moving to version 16.02, CDL technical staff are spending time behind the scenes planning; installing copies of the software in multiple environments (development, staging, production); converting the user interface; reindexing the catalog; and running quality assurance tests.  These operations combined take months to accomplish.  With a database as large and as complex as the Melvyl Catalog, reindexing alone takes six to eight weeks.

The CDL will keep you informed as we make this transition.

By Ellen Broidy (UCLA), Resource Liaison

After a month of beta testing, ABC-Clio unveiled a new search interface for America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts on January 2, 2006.  While users continue to have the option of doing a basic or an advanced search, the opening screens have a markedly different look and feel and allow for enhanced searching across the databases.

Highlights of the new interface include:

• A combined simple and advanced search screen that allows the user to control the display of search fields and search results.
• New pop-up help tips to assist in constructing successful searches.
• New retrospective coverage from JSTOR journals dating from 1838-2005, resulting in an increase of nearly 78% in full-text links by project’s end.
• New search history functionality that records search criteria, allowing users to rerun previous searches.
• New expand and collapse record functionality that streamlines the process of viewing results by displaying and hiding abstracts at the click of a mouse.

Other useful enhancements:

• A new Export to Citation Manager feature that will allow the user to save results directly to EndNote, ProCite, or Reference Manager (RefWorks will remain an export option).
• New setup functionality for non-OpenURL resolvers, permitting linking to non-OpenURL catalogs.
• A User’s Forum that will provide technical and database content support and a place for discussions related to the databases.
• Full-text links to over 330,000 sources, including ProQuest’s Dissertations and Theses Database.

In general, the changes add value to the databases, particularly in terms of enhanced access.  The new design, however, may require a period of adjustment for frequent users (and librarians).  The box format, while separating out the possible elements of a search argument, makes the screen appear busy and crowded and it’s less than immediately apparent how to back out of some of the features.  There are a number of bells and whistles such as lengthy author, subject and journal indexes but no apparent way to drop into a particular part of the alphabet with the exception of the journal list; however that requires accessing it from the very top of the initial search screen rather than from the search box feature. On balance, these are relatively minor shortcomings. Librarians and users should appreciate the changes to these important databases.