New OAC Redesign Project Page

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 | Category: General, Digital Special Collections

By Rosalie Lack, CDL Digital Special Collections Director

The Online Archive of California (OAC) is being completely redesigned for a planned live launch by early spring 2009.  OAC provides access to nearly 9,000 online archival finding aids and more than 170,000 digital images and documents, aggregated from more than 90 contributors from all 10 UC campuses and from cultural heritage institutions across California.  It is a vital resource for the University of California, the state of California, and researchers across the world.
A new web page has been created for the Redesign Project; see: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/oac/oacredesign.html .

The page includes a project status as of April 25th; project goals, timeline and background information.  This page will be updated as the project progresses.

New Shared Print Website

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 | Category: General, Collection Development

Emily Stambaugh, Shared Print Manager

CDL/CDC Shared Print has a new website.
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/resources/sharedprint/

The new site is integrated into Inside CDL and can be accessed through the Collection Development Process and Collections pages.  The site consists of two parts:

1. Main Shared Print page
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/resources/sharedprint/

2. Agreements and Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) pages
One of the goals for Shared Print is to bring greater visibility to current cooperative print agreements. These pages index the active cooperative print agreements made by UC Bibliographer groups, individual UC Libraries, extramural partners and the California Digital Library (on behalf of the UC Libraries).

The pages include active agreements that have been formalized and publicly posted.  Agreements that are managed by CDL/CDC Shared Print are identified with a special icon for Shared Print.

Agreements are grouped by Broad Discipline (Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences, Area Studies, Government Publications and Maps) and further identified as prospective or retrospective projects.

Request (Interlibrary Loan) Recent Enhancements

Monday, April 28th, 2008 | Category: General, Bibliographic Services

By Sherry Willhite, Request Project Manager

Increased security for Request service
In order to make the transmission of personal data and other information more secure within UC’s Request (interlibrary loan) service, Request began running under https (a secure version of http) on December 12, 2007.

Some users did not use the online Request service due to data security concerns.  The use of “https” removes the barrier to the Request service for these users.

The change to “https” for the Request service is essentially transparent to the user and does not require the user to change the way Request is accessed.  At the time of the change the campus proxy service contacts were asked to add port 4502 as an allowable SSL port.  In some cases, this new port may be blocked, making it difficult for users in some non-library campus buildings (such as labs) to access Request. If faculty or students in one of your campus departments are having trouble accessing Request, please ask them to check with their computer support service that port 4502 is allowed on their server.

January 15th, 2008 access to “My ILL Requests” limited to UC IPs.
Users must come in from a UC IP address from on campus or via their campus proxy or VPN service to access My ILL Requests, a service that allows users to view and manage their interlibrary loan requests online
 <http://ucill.cdlib.org:8082/zportal/zengine?VDXaction=LoginPage>

My ILL Requests enhancement
April 1, 2008 the “Sort by due date” option was added to My ILL Requests. 

Request service statistics
Statistics for My ILL Requests < http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/protected/ill-zportal/zportal-usage-2008.html> became available on February 21, 2008.

VDX statistics < http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/protected/vdx/> were changed from Crystal Reports to a web based product on with the February 2008 statistics reports posted on March 25, 2008.  The statistics reports are now posted in HTML on the Inside VDX pages, instead of PDF.  ILL staff members have access to a web tool to generate tab delimited reports.

Ever wonder what your users are up to? So do we!

Thursday, April 24th, 2008 | Category: General, Assessment

By Jane Lee, Senior Assessment Analyst

CDL’s assessment unit has been in existence for almost four years, and in that time, Felicia Poe and Jane Lee have enjoyed working with many of you in the campus libraries.  You’ve welcomed us into your libraries and rounded up students and faculty for surveys, user interviews, and usability tests.  CDL could not do our work without your help, and we want you to know that we are happy to answer any questions you may have about your own user assessment activities.

So, if you’d like to chat about users and usability, please contact Jane at Jane.Lee@ucop.edu.  She looks forward to hearing from you!

Journal and Database Usage Statistics Update

Thursday, April 24th, 2008 | Category: General, Collection Development

By Chan Li, CDL Data Analyst

Two types of reports are included:  Ejournal articles viewed by campus and Database searches & sessions by campus.  The aggregated annual reports represent a better consortial view of all the campuses’ data with two years trends.  Some resources included here are not covered by ScholarlyStats service at present.  The CDL reports are selective and not every publisher or vendor provides usage statistics.  CDL will monitor usage for newly licensed resources.

Usage statistics are an important metric for collection analysis.  Combined with other metrics, usage statistics have been applied in the title adjustment process and in publisher negotiations.  Usage data may be misinterpreted due to a variety of reasons.  Web crawlers and harvesters are increasingly common in the academic environment and are already causing usage data anomalies in CDL licensed resources.  One example discovered in the 2007 statistics was that data mining at one of the campuses in the Linguistics department inflated the usage for the journal Science.

  • Beginning in 2008, two new accounts will be added to UC statistics: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory library and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory library.  There will be 13 user accounts total.  ScholarlyStats is continuing to expand its list of platforms.  More about ScholarlyStats service: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/scholarlystats.html

UC Image Service News: Luna Insight Collections Update

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 | Category: General, Digital Special Collections

By Lena Zentall, CDL UC Image Service Manager

UC Shared Images implementation continues with CDL moving some collections from Luna Insight to ARTstor, while access to other collections is reverting to UC websites.

What do you need to do? 
Since PIDs (persistent identifiers) stay the same even when URLs change, you will not need to make any changes to links for collections with PIDs — provided you are using the PID.  (The UC Shared Cataloging Program manages PIDs.)  You may need to update descriptive information in your local catalogs and websites as some collection hosts have changed.

CDL licensed image collections

Saskia and Hartill will be available in Luna Insight until June 15, 2008, after which they will only be available in ARTstor.

Saskia Art and Architecture
Saskia will be available as a UC Shared Images collection in ARTstor in April 2008. 
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/32963  PID will be updated with the new URL on June 16, 2008,
New URL: http://www.artstor.org

Hartill Art and Architecture
Hartill is available now in ARTstor as part of the ARTstor digital library.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/97273  PID will be updated with the new URL on June 16, 2008,
New URL: http://www.artstor.org

What does this mean for users? 
Users will be able to easily search across these two CDL collections along with more than 750,000 images in the ARTstor digital library.

Other Insight collections moving in June 2008

AMICA
Art Museum Images from Cartography Associates (AMICA) will be available in Insight until June 30, 2008 when the license expires.  (See CDLInfo, March 6, 2008.)

Access to these collections in Insight will end on June 15, 2008:
LUCI
UC Riverside will continue to provide access to this collection on the LUCI website. Some contributors to this collection will be moving their LUCI images to their UC Shared Images collections hosted on ARTstor beginning in Fall 2008.
LUCI website: http://vrc.ucr.edu/luci/index.html

MOAC
An expanded version of Museums and the Online Archive of California (MOAC) is available to the UC community as well as the general public on CDL’s Calisphere website and the MOAC website (see below for URL).
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/32962  PID will be updated with the new URL on June 16, 2008,
New URL: http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/moac/search.html

SPIRO
SPIRO is UC Berkeley’s online image database from the College of Environmental Design Visual Resources Center.  The Visual Resources Center is in the process of merging select images from SPIRO into the UC Shared Images’ UC Berkeley Art and Architecture collection to be hosted by ARTstor. UC Berkeley is working with ARTstor to make this collection available in September 2008.  In addition, UC Berkeley will continue to make the SPIRO website available.
SPIRO website: http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/spiro

Tebtunis Papyri 
The entire collection of Tebtunis papyri images is available from the Bancroft’s Tebtunis website.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/22416  PID will be updated with the new URL on June 16, 2008,
New URL: http://tebtunis.berkeley.edu/index.html

UCSF Demonstration Project
This set of 99 dental and medical images from UCSF will no longer be available after June 15, 2008.

What does this mean for users?
Alternative access is available for nearly all these collections.  Many of these collections were built in Insight during the Image Demonstrator project to get experience with delivering image services and merging collections.  Most of these collections have primary sites outside of Insight that have been growing and improving while these “demonstrator” collections in Insight remained static.

Insight collections available after June 2008
More than 30,000 images are available in these collections provided to Insight clients.  New collections will be made available periodically in accordance with the JSCSC process for adding open-access resources.

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
http://uclibs.org/PID/97598

Estate Project for Artists with Aids
http://uclibs.org/PID/97599

Farber Gravestone Collection
http://uclibs.org/PID/97601

Hoover Institution Poster Collection
http://uclibs.org/PID/97602

Japanese Historical Maps
http://uclibs.org/PID/97603

National Palace Museum of Taipei
http://uclibs.org/PID/111721

What does this mean for users?
Users will continue to have access to these rich collections, which are freely available to the Insight community.

To learn more about UC Shared Images, see the CDL Image Service website: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/image or contact Lena Zentall, Image Service Manager (lena.zentall@ucop.edu, 510.987.9233).

Mass Digitization Projects Update

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 | Category: General, Collection Development

By Heather Christenson, CDL Mass Digitization Project Manager

The UC Libraries are in the process of scanning millions of books from our print collections so that ultimately users will be able to discover and access these books in digital form.  Our libraries have embraced this enterprise with both diligence and enthusiasm.  We’ve had a very dynamic couple of months in mass digitization activities across UC, with contributions from a broad representation of UC campuses.

On campus
The following UC Libraries’ locations have been contributing directly to our mass digitization projects: UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, NRLF and SRLF.  Staff members at these locations mobilize consistently and impressively on a daily basis to provide an enormous number of UC books for digitization.  Because of our efforts at NRLF and SRLF, books from almost every UC campus have entered the digitization flow.

In the news!
NRLF, UCSC, and UCSD have all recently been featured in news stories about the Google Book Search library project.  This is a testament to keen public interest in digital books, and to UC’s role in the worldwide wave of mass digitization.  It’s wonderful to see UC Librarians in the spotlight!

Behind the scenes at CDL
With the expansion of our Google projects to multiple locations, there has been a need to centralize some of the technical aspects of the operations (metadata transfer, sharing of files).  CDL has set up a shared server for automated deposit and transfer of files between CDL, campuses and digitization partners.  Work also continues on the CDL Mass Digitization Inventory Database (MDID), which will enable us to track the digitization workflow and make information available to the campuses for collection management purposes.  MDID is on schedule to be operational this summer.

CDL and UC Berkeley Library staff have been actively engaged in deliberations with technical staff at Google, Microsoft and the Internet Archive regarding quality standards, metadata, and other technical standards for our scanning projects.  CDL continues to download the book files made available to us by Google.  The Digital Preservation Group has been assessing cost models and options for storage and preservation of the tidal wave of files coming from mass digitization.

In March, Google asked CDL to test their new Google Book Search Book Availability API (application programming interface), and the CDL Bibliographic Services team rose to the occasion.  They used the API to create a “hook” within a test version of the Melvyl catalog, which extends the ability for UC students, faculty and staff to find the mass digitized content.  With this API, the UC community will be able to find not only what UC has digitized, but they will also have access to content digitized by any other Google partner.  CDL is planning on moving this into production Melvyl, after we complete our UC consultation process.  More information can be found within the official UC press release.

Inside CDL web site
We’ve just rolled out the mass digitization pages on Inside CDL.  You can now read about our projects, view the contracts with our digitization partners, take a look at media coverage, and most importantly get links to all the locations where you can access the digitized UC books.  Of particular interest is the extensive FAQ section.

Seeking testimonials
As we think ahead to effective ways for UC to collaboratively capitalize on this growing digital collection, CDL is interested to hear of positive experiences you’ve had in utilizing UC’s digitized books.  Please feel free to send them my way:
–Heather Christenson, CDL Mass Digitization Project Manager (heather.christenson@ucop.edu).

Michael McKinnon joins CDL as Principal Systems Architect

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 | Category: General

It is a real pleasure to announce that Michael McKinnon will be joining us permanently as the CDL’s principal systems architect. Michael has worked with us as a contractor since last summer, and brings 20+ years of experience from IR&C, TRW Data Services, and Hitachi, among others.  He has also served as a Unix instructor at Laney College.  Michael will take a principal role in administering our development and staging resources and working with IR&C to manage our production resources.

Transition to EBSCO Academic Search Complete from Gale Expanded Academic ASAP

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 | Category: General, Collection Development

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

The UC campuses will have systemwide access to a new multidisciplinary database with full text content in the arts, social sciences, humanities and sciences beginning immediately via EBSCO Academic Search Complete.  Access to Gale’s Expanded Academic ASAP will continue to run in parallel with this new database through June 30, 2008.  After that time, the CDL license for Expanded Academic will not be renewed.

Recently, the “choose a campus” screen for Gale’s Expanded Academic ASAP database (http://uclibs.org/PID/16600) was updated with information about EBSCO’s Academic Search Complete, including links to both the EBSCO database and Gale’s Expanded Academic ASAP database.

If your campus links directly to Gale’s Expanded Academic ASAP database via a campus-specific PID or URL, your users may be unaware that this transition is coming.  Please be sure to advertise locally about the new service, EBSCO’s Academic Search Complete, and about the retirement of Gale’s Expanded Academic ASAP database at the end of June.

Wiley: Newly Licensed Titles for 2008

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 | Category: General, Collection Development

By Terry Vrable, CDL Acquisitions Coordinator

As part of the 2008 renewal process for the Wiley InterScience online journals, 7 recommended titles have been added to the CDL’s site license with Wiley:

  1. Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering
  2. ChemMedChem
  3. IUBMB Life
  4. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions
  5. Journal of Hospital Medicine
  6. Project Management Journal
  7. Scanning - The Journal of Scanning Microscopies

UC-eLinks will be enabled and the titles cataloged by the Shared Cataloging Program as they become available online at Wiley InterScience (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/browse/?type=JOURNAL).

The full list of CDL-licensed titles is posted online at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/resources/publisher_info/WileyLicensedTitles2008.xls.

Details of the title selection process are described in the document “Managing Changes to Journal Packages” available at Inside CDL (http://www.cdlib.org/inside/collect/ejournal_guidelines.html).  Questions regarding these new titles can be directed to CDL Acquisitions, cdl-acquisitions@ucop.edu.

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