CDLINFO

By Rosalie Lack, CDL Digital Special Collections Director

Counting California, an award-wining, innovative site, was created in 2001 by the California Digital Library’s Patricia Cruse, with Margaret Low, Claudia Woo, Juri Stratford (UC Davis), Ilona Einowski (UC Berkeley) and Fred Gey (UC Berkeley).  The current project team, led by Rosalie Lack, includes Michael Russell and Brian Tingle.  The project received initial funding from the California State Library, the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), and the CDL.  At its launch, Counting California counted a number of “firsts”:

• It was among the first web sites providing aggregated statistics.
• It provided users with a single interface for accessing a variety of data and statistics about California from local, state, and federal government agencies.
• The site’s innovative use of DDI (Data Documentation Initiative), a metadata standard for social science data resources, resulted in a consistent display of data from different data producers.
• The site brought to light the preservation risk facing online statistical information.

Since 2001, the Internet has transformed the way data, statistics, and other information is disseminated.  As increasing numbers of trusted sites have begun making statistics available online, the content is no longer uniquely available from Counting California.  Although this was a compelling reason behind the decision to decommission the site, we also considered these other factors:

• Many new sites have been created using newer technologies that provide more robust search and display.
• According to a survey, most of our users were looking for population information, which is now widely available on the web.
• Usage statistics indicate that usage has been consistently decreasing over the last three years.
• No new datasets have been added to the site since 2006, because significant resources were needed to upgrade the interface and backend architecture to stay current.

When the site is removed, it will be replaced by a Referral Page that points users to online versions of the Counting California content.

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.)

Physics Today Archive (Systemwide Access via Scitation [American Institute of Physics])
http://ptonline.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=PHTOAD
Full text access from 1985 to all but the most recent 12 months of the magazine; current contents remain a benefit to member subscribers. AIP plans to digitize all issues back to the magazine’s launch in 1948, eventually creating a complete archive.

University of Chicago Press Online Journals (Systemwide access via University of Chicago Press)
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/
Chicago Journals Online is a fully searchable online portal including nearly fifty scholarly journals and annuals - from the latest research in a wide range of subjects to historical content dating from the founding of the University of Chicago Press in 1892 when it began publishing the Journal of Political Economy.  The website has features such as free e-TOC alerts by e-mail or RSS and publish-when-ready articles before print publication.

By Lena Zentall, CDL UC Image Service Manager

Reminder: Art Museum Images from Cartography Associates (AMICA) license ends June 30, 2008.

Access to the vast majority of AMICA images is available on ARTstor.  Currently, less than 20% (about 20,000) of AMICA images are unavailable in ARTstor; however, in many cases, ARTstor offers additional images from participating museums.  For example, AMICA has 29 images from The Phillips Collection, whereas ARTstor recently added 1,200 images from this collection.  The five campuses currently subscribing to AMICA (Davis, Irvine, Merced, Riverside and Santa Barbara) will  not renew their subscriptions.  CDL paid the final year of the subscription July 1, 2007-June 30, 2008, on behalf of these campuses to provide faculty and staff time to make the adjustment from AMICA via Insight to ARTstor. Individual faculty may subscribe directly to AMICA from David Rumsey.