CDLINFO

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

Projected release date of Next Generation Melvyl Pilot – April 2008
The projected release date for the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot, supported by OCLC’s WorldCat Local (WCL) service is April 2008.  The decision to roll out the service in April is the culmination of the analysis and design phase of the pilot planning and is based on input from the Implementation Team, campus experts from the first 15 UC Task Groups, the 3 current UC-OCLC Joint Workgroups, and in collaboration with OCLC leadership.  UC (that means many of you!) and OCLC staff are working intensively to ensure the success of the pilot by building integration between WCL and UC systems such as UC-eLinks and local ILS systems.  The Executive Team now has enough information about the integration development timeline to lay out a release schedule.

What will be in the April release?
The April release will include OCLC records with existing campus holdings symbols.  In addition, there will be sample records for the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF), Shared Cataloging Program (SCP), and from the Mass Digitization projects.  UC will add the new symbol for SRLF monographic records with an OCLC number to test the effect on resource sharing and discovery.  Digital Object Metadata from sample campus digital collections, the eScholarship Repository, as well as digital content from the Online Archive of California (OAC) will also be added to the pilot to experiment with non-MARC metadata.

What will be added after the April release?
Because of the complexity of the project, and to test functionality for holds and recalls, only records from the main ILS on each campus will be highlighted as UC holdings in the pilot.  As a result, some sources in the current Melvyl Catalog will only be represented as part of WorldCat in the pilot, including records from the California State Library, Hastings College of the Law, the California Academy of Sciences, the California Historical Society, the Center for Research Libraries, the Graduate Theological Union, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and some campus affiliated libraries.

This April release will not have a fully operational Request service; the full integration with Request will follow 2 months after the initial release of the pilot, in June 2008.  Because of the complexity of UC’s interlibrary loan service, developed over a period of many years, this portion of the pilot will take longer to implement.  The Executive Team has approved releasing the pilot in stages so that we can begin evaluation of the “discovery” features in the spring, while the majority of faculty and students are available to help us test the service.  When tighter integration with Request is added in the summer, we will focus on evaluating the “delivery” suite of services.

Releasing the pilot functionality in stages also allows us to model the “continuous improvement” nature of today’s systems and our ability to be nimble.  We expect that the WCL system will continue to add features and services throughout the pilot and beyond, based on user experience, formal user evaluations and OCLC product releases.  Request integration will be the first such important improvement.

What are the next steps?
The next phase of planning will lay out specific action steps leading up to the pilot release.  As part of that plan, three new task groups have recently begun or will begin work (Help and End User Support, End User Communication, and Assessment).  The Implementation Team will provide information to campuses for the pilot, including suggested dates for campus record clean-up, any needed local system configuration changes, and recommendations and best practices for the reclamation projects that some campuses are already planning.  For example, we now know that it will be critical for campuses to load OCLC numbers back into their records when completing reclamation projects in order to link their records to WCL during the pilot.

How can I find out more about the project?
Explore the website at http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/uc_oclc.html.

By Mary Elings, Archivist for Digital Collections at UCB’s Bancroft Library

In summer 2008, the Bancroft Library will return to its original location, the Doe Library Annex, from its temporary quarters in downtown Berkeley.  The state-mandated seismic retrofitting of its building, as well the much-needed upgrading of its facilities, is planned for completion by the end of spring 2008.  The Library will be closed for approximately five months during this move, and then will once again be open to the public.

Bancroft’s normal open hours will be maintained this spring for the preparation of the move.  From May 23, 2008 to mid-Fall 2008, Bancroft will be closed to the public in order to move its collections.  Other Bancroft Library programs affected by the move include the Mark Twain Papers and Project, the Regional Oral History Office, the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, and the University Archives.

For more information and updates about the move, please visit the Bancroft website at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info/move/ or call (510) 642-3781.

By Rosalie Lack, CDL Digital Special Collections Director

CDL’s Calisphere team is partnering with the Alameda County Office of Education’s CTAP Region IV <http://www.ctap4.org/> and the UC Irvine History Project <http://www.humanities.uci.edu/history/ucihp/> in order to:

• promote awareness and increase usage among California teachers of the rich resources from UC and cultural heritage organizations across California brought together in Calisphere <http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/>
• promote best practices for teaching with primary source materials
• show teachers how to incorporate technological solutions into their teaching that will excite and engage their students
• create a Calisphere training module that will be shared with all CTAP regions

CTAP Region IV
The California Technology Assistance Project (CTAP) is a statewide educational technology leadership initiative designed to provide assistance to schools and districts in integrating technology into teaching and learning. There are eleven CTAP offices across California. CTAP Region IV is comprised of the seven counties surrounding the north San Francisco Bay area: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Solano.

UC Irvine History Project
The UC Irvine History Project provides an institutional framework for collaboration between the UCI History Department and K-12 history/social science teachers in Orange County.  The core of their program is a series of teacher-training institutes in the subjects of literacy, world history, and United states history.  The UCI History Project is a regional branch of the California Subject Matter Project (CSMP), a statewide umbrella organization administrated by UC Office of the President that promotes university-public school collaboration.  Learn more about CSMP at http://csmp.ucop.edu/.

Upcoming Activities
In February and March 2008, two 2-day workshops - Bring California History Into Your Classroom with Calisphere Images & an iPod - will be conducted.  The target audiences will be 4, 8, and 11th grade language arts and history/social studies teachers and library media teachers. The online applications are due by November 16, 2007. If you know teachers in these categories who would benefit from the workshops, please refer then to the application at http://www.ctap4.org/calisphere/.

By Trisha Cruse, CDL Director of Digital Preservation

The CDL Digital Preservation Group has been busy with a variety of exciting activities, reported below.

Release 4 of the Web Archiving Service
On September 18th the Web Archiving Group released a new version of the Web Archiving Service – special thanks to Tracy Seneca, Scott Fisher, Margaret Low, Erik Hetzner, Mark Reyes, and Mike Wooldridge for getting this release out the door.  So far the group has received very positive feedback from users on the service’s functionality and the user interface.  We are also extremely pleased with the performance; we are up to 500 captures with relatively few hiccups.

We have also put together an overview of the service that is available on YouTube <http://tinyurl.com/2tdrwq>.  This brief overview explains why the content targeted for this project is at risk, how we plan to address this in the Web Archiving Service, and provides an explanation of the collections our curators are working on. Warning: the YouTube video quality is a bit sketchy so we have also made this presentation available in a high-quality video format; contact tracy.seneca at ucop dot edu for further information.

A kinder and gentler ARK page
Thanks to Kirsten Neilsen and John Kunze there is now a kinder, gentler introduction to ARK identifiers on Inside CDL <http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/ark/>.  Don’t know what that is?  Then definitely take a look.  Our hope is that this will help others recognize and appreciate the true beauty and splendor of ARKs.  The new page has already been re-purposed in a German "technology watch" newsletter, <http://www.kim-forum.org/techwatch/kim-dini-technology-watch-report1_2007.pdf> which is the very first edition of a bi-annual publication from the Interoperable Metadata Center for Excellence and the German Networked Information Initiative.

Tidal wave of web data knocking on our door
For the past several years the Digital Preservation group has been working with Andreas Paepcke and Hector Garcia-Molina at Stanford University on web crawling activities.  Their research group has a wealth of experience collecting web data and while CDL’s Digital Preservation group was getting their “web crawling sea legs” they asked Stanford’s group to collect data on our behalf.  Over the years Stanford has collected over 100 TB of data ranging from dot.gov sites, election data, Katrina, Virginia Tech tragedy, etc.  However, they have been using a different crawler than the Web Archiving Service (WAS) crawler (Heritrix).  As a consequence their crawler output is incompatible with most web archiving services, including ours.  However, there is good news — they have recently created a tool that will turn the output of their crawler data into something that CDL’s service can understand.  Erik Hetzner, Mike Wooldridge, and Scott Fisher are just beginning to play around with this, but we are hoping for a positive outcome.

Contributing to the community by documenting Heritrix
As mentioned above, our Web Archiving Service uses Heritrix, the Internet Archive’s (IA) open-source, extensible, web-scale, archival-quality web crawler project.  "Heritrix" (often misspelled heretrix, heratrix, heritix, etc.) is an archaic word for "heiress", which the IA chose because the project seeks to collect and preserve the digital artifacts of our culture for the benefit of future researchers and generations.  One of the challenges of using Heritrix is that there is a dearth of documentation.  Over the next several months Hunter Stern, CDL’s technical writer, will be working with Heritrix programmers at CDL and IA to better document the crawler.  This collaboration will help us tremendously and benefit the crawler community as well.

Moving big data: Mass Transit Project
Over the past couple of years the Digital Preservation Group has been working with the campuses to move large chunks of content into the Digital Preservation Repository (DPR).  In the process we have encountered a few speed bumps along the way. The issues are two-fold but related: the files are large and the network transfer rates have been unaccountably slow.  Though we have worked towards resolving this, we have more work to do in understanding the best transfer tools and in monitoring our networks to make sure there are no log jams and that they are ready to be used to their full potential bandwidth.  The goal is to make sure we’re making the best use of our Internet2 pathways to/from the campuses and the data centers for the benefit of all CDL projects.

The Digital Preservation group has embarked on two efforts to speed up movement of large files into the DPR.  First, they are collaborating with San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) to understand how to transfer data across the network more quickly and efficiently.  Second, they are implementing (on a trial basis) a method of pulling in large numbers of external data objects into a kind of preservation holding tank in order to reduce the impact of network speed and latency on the overall DPR ingest process.  They are very excited about the collaboration with SDSC and Kirsten Neilsen will be leading the project for CDL – we’re calling the project “Mass Transit” and there is a project Wiki <http://masstransit.sdsc.edu/>.

If you want any additional information on any of these projects please contact Trisha Cruse (patricia.cruse@ucop.edu).

By Lisa Mix, Manager, UCSF Archives & Special Collections

The UCSF Library and Center for Knowledge Management is pleased to announce a new website featuring the Japanese Woodblock Print Collection at http://asian.library.ucsf.edu/.

Visitors to the website may search for prints by keyword or artist, view prints by theme, and read essays about five themes in the collection: Contagious Disease, Drug Advertisements, Foreigners, Religion and Health, and Women’s Health.

Funding from the California Digital Library (CDL) supported the project to create digital images of the prints and make them available on the web.  The website uses CDL’s Interface Customization Tools to perform searches and display the images.

The UCSF Japanese Woodblock Print Collection has drawn interest from scholars of Asian medicine, the history of medicine, and Japanese art, as well as current health care practitioners.  Consisting of approximately 400 prints, it is the largest collection of woodblock prints related to health in the United States and an important component of the Library’s East Asian Collection.

The prints offer a visual account of Japanese medical knowledge in the late Edo and Meiji periods.  The majority of the prints date from the mid- to late nineteenth century, when Japan was opening to the West after almost two hundred and fifty years of self-imposed isolation.

Images of the prints can also be accessed through Calisphere and the Online Archive of California.

For more information, contact Lisa Mix at lisa.mix@library.ucsf.edu.

By Lena Zentall, CDL UC Image Service Manager

Did you know that over half a million high quality digital images are currently available to UC students, faculty and staff in a searchable database?

Every UC campus (except UCSF) now has access to ARTstor, a digital library containing nearly 550,000 images in the areas of art, architecture, humanities and social sciences.  Thousands of additional images are added each month covering a wide range of cultures and time periods.

Demonstrations for faculty and library staff – 90 minutes

A demonstration highlighting the major features of ARTstor collections, tools, and services for a mixed audience of faculty and library staff is planned for all UC campuses.  This is an ideal time to get faculty and library staff from across campus and across disciplines together to talk about image use on campus.  The demonstration starts with a question period to discuss how image use is being supported currently on campus so there is some context for the ARTstor discussion. Megan Marler of ARTstor will lead the demonstration.  Lena Zentall from CDL will be available to discuss the Image Service and UC Shared Images.

Who Should Attend?

The ARTstor Digital Library is useful for librarians, educators, scholars and students in a wide variety of disciplines.  While ARTstor is an essential companion for historians of art and architecture and others engaged with the visual arts, individuals in fields as diverse as African American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Architecture & Architectural History, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Design & Decorative Studies, History, Language & Literature, Literary Studies, Medieval Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Music, Native American Studies, Photography, Religious Studies, Renaissance Studies,  Theater & Dance and Women’s Studies are also finding the digital images ARTstor offers to be relevant to their teaching and research.

Campus Visit Schedule

For more information, contact Lena Zentall, Image Service Manager (lena.zentall@ucop.edu; 510.987.9233).

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

In the month of September 2007, UC task groups and joint UC-OCLC workgroups have continued their inquiry and exploration and formed thoughtful, well reasoned recommendations aimed at creating an enhanced Next Generation Melvyl Pilot, supported by the WorldCat Local Service. 

The UC-OCLC Pilot Project Implementation and Executive Teams want to thank not only the many members of the task groups, but also all those who have filled in behind incredibly busy colleagues. Thank you so much!

You can read and study the reports of these groups (and be enlightened) at the project’s website:
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/uc_oclc.html

Items released in September include

New Task Group charge:
Help & End User Support Task Group
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/Help_and_End_User_Support_Charge.doc

New Task Group reports:
Local Bibliographic Data Task Group
Core Data to Store in the OCLC Local Holdings Record (LHR)
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/LHR_data_20070824.doc

Report of the Non-Roman Search and Display Task Group
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/UC_OCLC_Pilot_Non_Roman_TF.pdf

Final Report of Use Cases: Searching Serials & Series Task Group
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/UC_OCLC_Pilot_Series_Serials_TF.pdf

Report of the Browse Search Task Group
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/Full_Report_of_BTG.pdf

Report of the Searching Special Collections/Archives Task Group: Challenges of Meeting User Needs
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/ArchivalSpecialCollections_Melvyl_Report.pdf

Report of the Searching Government Information/Maps/GIS Task Group
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/Docs_Report.pdf

Searching Music Task Group Use Cases
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/Use_Cases_Music_Group.pdf

Circulation Transactions Final Report
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/Circulation_Final_Report.doc

Appendix A: Institution Registry Responses for 4 ILSs in UC
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/Circ_Report_Appendix_A3.doc
Appendix B: Holds & Recalls at Each Campus
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/Circ_Report_Appendix_B3.doc

New Update:
Reclamation, Retrospective Loads and the UC Libraries
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/Reclamation_BatchLoad_ProjectsGuidelines.doc

Congratulations on the very impressive, thoughtful work that moves the UC libraries closer to a Next Generation Melvyl Pilot.