Take part in the CDL website redesign! Share your thoughts through our short survey!

Monday, July 28th, 2008 | Category: General, Assessment

By Jane Lee, CDL Assessment Analyst

How are you using CDL’s website? Does CDL’s website help you do your work?
What can the website do better?  We want to know!

Five years ago, CDL launched two sites, InsideCDL (http://www.cdlib.org/inside/) and the CDL "brochure" site (http://www.cdlib.org), to meet the needs of UC librarians and library staff, as well as the general public. It is now time to revisit CDL’s web presence and find out what has and has not been working for you, our partners.

Your participation in this brief survey will help the CDL determine how to improve its website to meet your information needs. The last day to take the survey is Friday, August 15, 2008.

Survey: http://tinyurl.com/cdl-website-survey

Thank you in advance for taking the time to share your thoughts with us!

CDL Staff at ELPUB2008 Conference

Thursday, July 24th, 2008 | Category: Digital Publishing

By Lisa Schiff, Technical Lead for CDL Publishing Services

The Publishing Group had a very successful trip to the ELPUB2008 conference (http://www.elpub.net) in Toronto, where Kirk Hastings and Martin Haye lead a well-received hands-on workshop on the eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) and Lisa Schiff presented a paper on the Mark Twain Project Online.  A copy of the paper can be downloaded from the ELPUB Digital Library here:  http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?_id=363_elpub2008&sort=DEFAULT&search=schiff&hits=2

Next Generation Melvyl Pilot – July Update and News

Friday, July 18th, 2008 | Category: General, Bibliographic Services

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

There are a number of recent developments in the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot:

  • The standalone Request function in the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot will be delayed until late fall, 2008.  Request will continue to be operational in Next Gen Melvyl as it is now, via the UC-eLinks button.
  • The findings of the usability tests conducted on advanced researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Irvine will be made available later this month.
  • All feedback from the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot is now coming directly to the CDL.  Previously, feedback sent by librarians or library employees went to OCLC, while all other (from patrons, students, library users or those not affiliated with a library) came to the CDL.  The reason for this change is that OCLC consulted so often with CDL on the meaning of UC practices, acronyms, and other contextual issues that it was more efficient to have these come directly to those familiar with the UC system.  The CDL continues to consult with OCLC on feedback issues when needed.
  • A joint UC-OCLC Large Serials Working Group including other academic library WorldCat Local (WCL) partners, Ohio State and the University of Washington, was formed to tackle the thorny technical and user interface issues pertaining to large serials retrievals.  The turnaround time for the group was 3 weeks. OCLC is considering launching similar working groups for areas such as special collections and music, and possibly others.

Article level metadata from the Modern Language Association (MLA) and H.W. Wilson indexes will be added in early 2009 to the more than 50 million articles indexed from NLM MEDLINE, the Department of Education’s ERIC database, the British Library Inside serials, the GPO Monthly Catalog and the OCLC ArticleFirst® database to expand access and discovery of authoritative content through WCL.

Among the improvements to the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot with OCLC’s July 14 installation
update to WCL:

  • Series display are enhanced and hyperlinked
  • Personal authors now display for eScholarship Repository items
  • Links for electronic resources (856 field) for each individual UC institution are displayed in the group (union) view
  • More complete physical description information for archival records is included
  • Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO) have been loaded

And…coming soon… Google Gadgets and Facebook Widgets.  Google Gadgets enable you to search Next Gen Melvyl from your iGoogle Homepage, Google Desktop, or virtually any other webpage you create.  A Facebook widget allows you to search the catalog directly from your Facebook account.

CDL Staff in Print

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 | Category: Digital Preservation

By John Kunze, CDL Preservation Technologies Architect

CDL’s Preservation Program staff member Erik Hetzner presented a paper at JCDL (Joint Conference on Digital Libraries) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last month.  His paper is entitled, "A simple method for citation metadata extraction using hidden Markov models" and is available at http://gales.cdlib.org/~egh/hmm-citation-extractor/sp181-hetzner.pdf.

CDL recruiting for Digital Preservation Services Manager

Friday, July 11th, 2008 | Category: General, Digital Preservation

By Patricia Cruse, CDL Director of the Digital Preservation Program

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY

TITLE: Digital Preservation Services Manager

CATEGORY: Full-Time

SALARY: Salary commensurate with qualifications and experience.
Excellent benefits.

TO APPLY:  http://jobs.ucop.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=52447

POSITION DESCRIPTION:

Want to be part of a dynamic team that is working to preserve digital information for future generations?  At the California Digital Library (CDL), we’ve developed a world-class program to preserve digital material that supports the University of California’s research, teaching, and learning mission and you can be a part of it.  A key member of the team is the Digital Preservation Services Manager — reporting to the Director of the Digital Preservation Program the Manager is responsible for the day-to-day management of digital preservation services (production and development) through project management, the provision of support services (whether offered in person or online), and liaison with digital preservation service providers and support staff.  In addition, the Services Manager will be responsible for translating experience of users’ needs and perceptions of system capabilities in a manner that informs further refinement and extension of the digital preservation technology and service infrastructure.

This is an ideal opportunity for someone with solid people skills and a passion for working in a collaborative and dynamic environment.

The California Digital Library (CDL) supports the assembly and creative use of the world’s scholarship and knowledge for the UC libraries and the communities they serve.  In partnership with the UC libraries, the California Digital Library established the digital preservation program to ensure long-term access to the digital information that supports and results from research, teaching and learning at UC.

JOB REQUIREMENTS:

Bachelor’s degree in the social sciences, public administration, library and information science or a related field and at least three years’ relevant experience with development or delivery of online information services in educational, digital preservation, library, research, and/or cultural heritage settings or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

Demonstrated experience to plan, evaluate, budget for and manage complex projects from their inception through to their final delivery.

Plans projects and assignments and monitors performance according to priorities as demonstrated by regularly meeting established deadlines in an environment of multiple projects and changing priorities.

Strong logic and quantitative reasoning skills as demonstrated by ability to review and assess a range of variables to define key issues, evaluate reasonable alternatives and translate findings into recommended changes, actions or strategies.

Proven experience with and general understanding of the academic user community and the digital library/scholarly information services domain.

Demonstrated experience working with user community and technology/programming staff to build use cases, functional requirements and user interface design.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills as demonstrated by the ability to understand and articulate technical ideas and issues at a conceptual level and explain them clearly and concisely to non-technical staff.

Demonstrated ability to operate under general direction, able to develop creative solutions to problems, and tackle issues in a self-motivated manner in a service-oriented geographically distributed team environment.

Demonstrated ability to plan, evaluate, budget for and manage complex projects from their inception through to their final delivery.

UC Image Service News: More Luna Insight collections

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 | Category: General, Digital Special Collections

By Lena Zentall, CDL UC Image Service Manager

Thirteen additional Luna Insight image collections were recently made available by CDL for the UC Image Service.  These open-access collections are hosted by various institutions such as UC Merced, Cornell, Stanford and others, and are freely shared with the Insight community.  To view the collections, open your Luna Insight client (see download instructions below) and select one or more collections.  Alternatively, you may view one collection at a time using the Insight browser with the URLs (PIDs) below.  Note: The Insight browser has limited functionality.  To learn more about these collections, see the CDL Image Service, Luna Collections website at http://www.imageservice.cdlib.org.

Andrew Dickson White Architectural Photographs (Cornell)
1,358 images of 19th- and early 20-century architecture, decorative arts, sculpture and photographs.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130815

Catena Historic Gardens & Landscapes (Bard)
1,710 historic and contemporary images, including plans, engravings, and photographs, covering garden history and landscape studies with a focus on Italian villas.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130816
URL: http://bard.lunaimaging.com:8083/BrowserInsight/BrowserInsight?cmd=start&cid=BardBAR1NA&un=collectionshare&pw=share&iia=0&isl=0
Note: The PID works in Firefox, but you must paste the URL directly into Internet Explorer.

Claire Holt Indonesian Art Images (Cornell)
1,775 images of Indonesia, including art, architecture, ceremonies, landscapes, paintings, people, sculpture, textiles, and theatre.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130817

Early American Images, John Carter Brown Library (Brown)
5,097 graphic representations of the colonial Americas, from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, drawn entirely from primary sources printed or created between 1492 and ca. 1825.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130818

Icelandic and Faroese Photographs (Cornell)
416 images depict Iceland and the Faeroe Islands on the edge of modernity at the end of the 19th century, including landscapes, farmsteads, towns and people.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130819

Lee Institute for Japanese Art (UC Merced)
1,201 images comprising Japanese screen and scroll paintings, sculptures, prints, ceramics, and lacquerwares from the 10th to the 21st centuries with particular emphasis on paintings of the Edo period (1600-1868).
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130845

Maps of Africa (Stanford)
578 images of antiquarian maps of Africa from the Stanford University Libraries, dating from the late 15th to early 20th century.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130820

Political Americana Collection (Cornell)
2,278 images of Presidential promotional and commemorative items dating from 1789 to 1980; elections from 1832 to 1960 are particularly well represented.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130821

Pratt Institute Ex Libris Collection
1,289 images of 19th- and 20th-century bookplates from private and institutional libraries feature finely detailed engraving or etching and serve as outstanding examples of period book art and typography.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130822

Pratt Institute Fashion Plate Collection
129 images of hand-colored fashion plates from 1922 created by such prominent French artists as George Barbier, Pierre Brissaud, and Georges Lepape, and anticipate the Art Deco movement of the mid-1920s.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130823

Rylands Collection (University of Manchester)
4,823 images spanning 5,000 years including rare books, manuscripts and archives: literary, historical, antiquarian, genealogical, biblical, devotional, ritualistic, medical, scientific, legal and administrative texts in numerous languages.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130824

Walter Scott Collection (University of Edinburgh)
446 images including portraits of Scott and of people associated with Scott, art inspired by his novels and poems, illustrations to editions of his works, and pictures of places associated with Scott.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130826

World War II Posters (Bucknell)
20 posters from Bucknell University’s Special Collections.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130827

Luna Insight software version 5.6

To download the most recent version of the Luna Insight java client (version 5.6) for either Mac or PC, follow the instructions on the Image Service Insight Download web page: http://www.imageservice.cdlib.org/insight.html.  Download the java client from this page rather than getting it directly from the Luna Imaging website; the CDL version has been bundled so users can open the client without being prompted for a username and password.

New Resources – C19: The Nineteenth Century Index and Karger Online Journals

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 | Category: General, Collection Development

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):

C19: The Nineteenth Century Index (Systemwide access via ProQuest on the Chadwyck-Healy platform)
http://uclibs.org/PID/130229
“The most comprehensive and dynamic source for discovering nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives.  The C19 Index draws on the strength of established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole’s Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.5 million books and official publications, 71,000 archival collections and 16.3 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers.  C19 Index now provides integrated access to 12 bibliographic indexes, including almost a million records from the ongoing digitization of British Periodicals Collections I and II.” 

Karger Online Journals (Systemwide access via S. Karger on the Karger platform)
http://uclibs.org/PID/62044
Access to more than 70 journals in the scientific, medical and biomedical fields available from Karger Publishers from 1998 forward.  Added titles will be included as they appear.

Bagit: Transferring Digital Content

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 | Category: Digital Preservation

By Trisha Cruse, Director of Digital Preservation

The CDL Digital Preservation Group, under the leadership of John Kunze, has co-developed with the Library of Congress a format for transferring digital content.  “The BagIt format specification is based on the concept of ‘bag it and tag it,’ where digital content is packaged (the bag) along with a small amount of machine-readable text (the tag) to help automate the content’s receipt, storage and retrieval.  There is no software to install.  BagIt is an attempt to simplify large-scale data transfers between cultural institutions.”

Find at more from the Library of Congress press release:
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/news/2008/20080602news_article_bagit.html

The full BagIt specification is available at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/bagit/bagitspec.html

SJSU Intern at the CDL

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 | Category: General

By Joan Starr, CDL Project Planning & Resource Allocation Manager

CDL welcomes intern Lisa Conrad.  She will be working on a project to develop a method to measure the impact of CDL services beyond the straight usage statistics on our sites by using web analytics tools, analyzing social networking sites and possibly the use of toolbars and widgets.

Lisa is currently working on a master’s in Library and Information Science at San Jose State University.  She has an MFA from the University of Illinois, Chicago and has experience with various arts projects as well as having been a copy editor and legal assistant.

Powered by WordPress and CDL Web Production