CDLINFO

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

UC campuses now have access to these electronic resources as part of CDL consortial licenses.  (Some campuses may have already had access to these titles through previous local campus subscriptions):

Alloy Phase Diagram Center Online  (Tier 2 license for Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced and San Diego; access via ASM International, the Materials Information Society)
http://uclibs.org/PID/113611
The ASM Alloy Phase Diagrams Center allows subscribers to explore, search and view more than 11,000 binary and ternary phase diagrams and associated phase data for more than 2400 systems from their Web browsers. The first release contains 8,000 binary phase diagrams and 2,000 ternary phase diagrams. After two updates, the collection will be comprised of 10,000 binary and 20,000 ternary diagrams.  The first update will occur in September and include close to 18,000 ternary diagrams.

The online resource will supersede ASM’s print and CD collections.  The information was compiled by Dr. Pierre Villars, an expert in the field of phase diagrams and author of numerous ASM publications on the APD subject.

Empire Online  (Systemwide access via Adam Matthew Digital)
http://uclibs.org/PID/113692
A collection of original documents relating to Empire Studies from 1492 - 2007 sourced from libraries and archives around the world.  This project has been developed to encourage undergraduate work with rare primary documents. By using images of the texts rather than transcriptions, Empire Online enables students to connect with the past with greater immediacy. Each Section features thematic essays by leading scholars in the field of Empire Studies. The essays relate directly to the source material covered by the online publication with 30-50 hypertext links per essay to documentary evidence.

Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān  (Systemwide access, minus UCSF, via Brill Academic Publishers on the Semantico Platform)
http://uclibs.org/PID/113653
Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān (EQ) combines alphabetically-arranged articles about the contents of the Qur’ān. It is an encyclopaedic dictionary of qur’ānic terms, concepts, personalities, place names, cultural history and exegesis extended with essays on the most important themes and subjects within qur’ānic studies. With nearly 1,000 entries in 5 volumes, the EQ is the first comprehensive, multi-volume reference work on the Qur’ān to appear in a Western language.

Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures  (Systemwide access, minus UCSF, via Brill Academic Publishers on the Semantico Platform)
http://uclibs.org/PID/113652
The Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (EWIC) is an interdisciplinary, trans-historical, and global project. It brings together upwards of 1,000 scholars to write critical essays on women, Muslim and non-Muslim and Islamic cultures in every region where there have been significant Muslim populations. It aims to cover every topic for which there is significant research, examining these regions from the period just before the rise of Islam to the present. EWIC hopes both to offer the state of the art in the broad sweep of topics to inform the general audience and to take on cutting-edge issues to stimulate new research in new terrains.

Everyday Life and Women in America  (Systemwide access via Adam Matthew Digital)
http://uclibs.org/PID/113691
This digital collection is a resource for the study of American social, cultural, and popular history, providing access to rare primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.

Latin American Data Base  (Systemwide access via Latin American and Iberian Institute, University of New Mexico)
http://uclibs.org/PID/113694
LADB is a news and educational service on Latin America.  LADB produces three weekly news bulletins about Mexico (SourceMex), Central America and the Caribbean including Cuba (NotiCen), and South America (NotiSur) and maintains an online searchable database of over 24,000 articles from back issues of LADB publications) as well as Latin American journals.  LADB also offers free lesson plans about Latin America designed for secondary school teachers, and a teaching materials and resources database.

Play Index  (Systemwide Access via WilsonWeb)
http://uclibs.org/PID/113654
Citations to 31,000 plays from 1949 – present.  Includes monologues, plot summaries, cast sizes, male and female roles, etc. Search for plays by title; author; subject (culture conflict, marriage); style (symbolism, experimental theater); genre (comedy, melodrama, musical); cast type; and more.

Rand California  (Systemwide Access via Rand California)
http://uclibs.org/PID/113693
Rand California, sponsored by the think-tank, RAND, is a subscription-based service on California and U.S. public policy with an emphasis on statistics.

By Kirsten Neilsen, Digital Preservation Service Manager

Digital Preservation Repository (DPR)
The Digital Preservation Repository (DPR) provides the UC Libraries with a shared solution for the preservation, management, and controlled dissemination of digital collections.

To date, UC Libraries have successfully moved about 250 GB – more than 55,000 objects – into the production DPR environment, with several projects on deck. Thus far objects ingested have been predominantly image and text files, but DPR can ingest video and audio files as well.

With core ingest, storage, and management functionality in production, the Digital Preservation Group is developing additional preservation services, such as remote data replication, and enhancing reporting functionality. Research into data storage and data transfer, issues central to digital preservation, is ongoing.

Web-at-Risk Update
In collaboration with archivists and librarians from a number of UC (and other) libraries, the Web-at-Risk program is developing the Web Archiving Service, a set of tools for capturing and preserving at-risk materials from the web. Development of the service proceeds in a series of phased pilot tests. During each pilot release, the project’s curators test functionality and suggest improvements. Feedback from curators is incorporated into the subsequent releases.

Development of the Web Archiving Service (WAS) is progressing toward the 4th of 7 releases, scheduled for July. The upcoming release includes collection building features that allow curators to selectively add captured web content to a thematic collection.  The release will also include website change analysis tools to help curators identify files on a site that have changed or that are new. The Web-at-Risk curators, a group of approximately 30 UC, Stanford, NYU and University of North Texas government information specialists, will be meeting in Oakland at the end of May.  A smaller group of curators will be taking part in usability testing sessions on the new WAS interface. 

The most recent WAS release took place in January and included the ability to better analyze capture results and to explore results by file type.  The analysis of that pilot test is complete, and is posted on the Web-at-Risk wiki: http://wiki.cdlib.org/WebAtRisk/ .

The Web-at-Risk program recently received additional funding from the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program to explore end user access to web archives.

NOID (Nice Opaque Identifier): Minter and Name Resolver
A new Inside CDL page (http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/noid/) contains a brief discussion of opaque identifiers, persistence, and name resolution as a way of introducing NOID, software created at CDL to provide part of the solution to the problem of persistent identifiers.
 
For information, contact: Kirsten Neilsen, Digital Preservation Service Manager
510-987-0456 kneilsen@ucop.edu

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

Task Groups Being Formed
The UC/OCLC Pilot (or Next Generation Melvyl) Project Implementation Team is relying on campus expertise to help analyze, plan, implement, and evaluate the complex bibliographic and technical services issues and workflows involved in the creation of the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot, supported by the WorldCat Local service.  The project is being divided into discrete tasks and each will be assigned to a small group for rapid study and response. Each group will also have a designated lead and be assigned an Implementation Team liaison to facilitate communication and filter questions that may have to be answered by OCLC. Task Groups may call on others for help, provided that the above caveats about rapid turnaround time and flexibility are kept in mind.

Experts are identified by the Implementation Team in consultation with All Campus Groups (ACGs) and/or appropriate campus administrative team members.  Participants will be tracked over the project period, with a goal of maximizing campus participation and minimizing overuse of the same staff.

The Task Groups have defined deliverables and short turnaround times for reporting back to the Implementation Team, and in some cases, to other groups such as Heads of Technical Services (HOTS).  While the first groups are focused on technical issues, groups examining collections and public service issues will be formed as the project unfolds.

Current Task Group charges can be found at
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/uc_oclc.html#committee.  Additional Task Groups will be formed throughout the life of the project.  Some are UC-only teams; others will be joint UC-OCLC teams.  Check back to see new group charges and membership of groups as they are formed.

Planning Progress
The Implementation Team is meeting twice weekly via conference call; one call each week is with the OCLC Implementation Team.  To date, the Implementation Team has had two day-long face-to-face meetings, and a face-to-face meeting with the OCLC Implementation Team in early May. The UC Executive Team meets twice monthly with the OCLC Executive Team. 

The Implementation Team is defining four stages of the project:

1. Features or functions that must be in place for day 1 of the launch of the pilot (late 2007 or early 2008).
2. Features or functions that will be implemented during the course of the four-month pilot.
3. Features or functions that will be planned during the pilot and implemented after, should the pilot move to production.
4. Features or functions that can be implemented after the pilot.

Areas for potential collaboration between UC and OCLC are being identified as we work on the project.  The Team is also planning for user assessment to analyze possible problems, and discover mitigations for them. 

University of Washington Pilot
The University of Washington Libraries has launched a pilot WorldCat Local catalog 
(http://uwashington.worldcat.org/).

The goal of the pilot is to provide users with a single search and request service that covers the University of Washington Libraries, Summit libraries (most academic libraries in Washington and Oregon), WorldCat and a selection of article citations—all through one catalog.

Features initially include a single search box, relevancy ranking of search results, result sets that bring multiple versions of a work together, faceted browsing, citation formatting options and cover art.

Through a locally branded interface, the service provides libraries the ability to search the entire WorldCat database and present results beginning with items most accessible to the user. WorldCat Local interoperates with locally maintained services like circulation, resource sharing and resolution to full text to create a seamless experience for the end user.  The UW pilot has many features that will be similar to UC’s. Search the UW pilot at http://www.lib.washington.edu/ .

Learn more about UC’s pilot
To learn more about the Next Generation Melvyl pilot project, visit http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/uc_oclc.html .

An FAQ is available at http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/uc_oclc_faq.html .

By Bob Heyer-Gray, Interim CDL Resource Liaison Coordinator

Didn’t make it to the Resource Liaisons Meeting in Newport Beach?  You were there but got up so early that you do not remember what it was you heard?  You were asked to do a recap of the meeting for other staff at your library but took no notes?  Have no fear.  The meeting notes, presentations, and audio files are now up on the CDL Resource Liaisons web page:
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/rl/meetings.html

Yes, you read correctly, thanks to Alison Ray, for the first time we also have MP3 files associated with the presentations.  The audio files will really help provide context to the PowerPoint presentations and as a result, more fully capture the events of the meeting. 

You can find the agenda for the meeting at:
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/rl/2007_Agenda.rtf

or jump straight to the meeting notes, presentations, and MP3 files at:
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/rl/2007_Mtg_Notes.html

Many thanks to Jayne Dickson for getting these materials compiled and posted to the web so quickly and to all the CDL staff that were involved in getting what I believe was a very successful meeting accomplished.

By Sara Davidson (UCM), Resource Liaisons for The Chronicle of Higher Education

Academe Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s daily email report (formerly premium content), is now freely available.  UC users can subscribe to this popular email newsletter which summarizes the latest news in higher education and provides links to the complete news articles posted on The Chronicle’s web site every day.  (Note: Linking from the newsletter to The Chronicle’s article will still require authentication, if accessed remotely.)

Signing up is simple.

• Visit https://chronicle.com/services/?slm to create a free account or log in to an existing account and add Academe Today located under “Other Tools”.
• Choose the format in which you want to receive Academe Today–either HTML or plain text.
• Once you have confirmed your email address, you’ll receive your own copy of Academe Today the next weekday morning (Eastern Time).

Academe Today is an excellent addition to the other chronicle email newsletters already available.  A list of The Chronicle’s email newsletters is available at http://chronicle.com/help/emails/?slm