CDLINFO

By Rosalie Lack, CDL Digital Special Collections Director

A new Themed Collection: 1780-1880: California in Transition is now available in Calisphere.
This great new addition adds breadth to students’ discovery of California’s history through 4 topics:

• Early California exploration and settlement
• California missions
• Californio society
• Rich natural resources

More than 100 unique primary source images and documents — including photographs, paintings and drawings, hand-drawn diseño maps, and much more — fill the four topics in this theme.  Students can explore these rich resources in the context of short essays that introduce them to the social, political, and economic transitions that marked the conquest and cultural exchange of California’s early history.

Calisphere is provides online access to over 180,000 primary source materials. The site is valuable in fields as diverse as history, geography, sociology, agricultural economics, art and architecture and religious and ethnic studies.

By Felicia Poe, CDL Assessment, Design & Assessment Services Manager

Felicia Poe has assumed the role of CDL SOPAG representative, replacing Patricia (Trisha) Cruse, who held the post since February 2004. Felicia is the Assessment, Design & Assessment Services Manager and has been with CDL since 2001.  Many thanks to Trisha for her contributions to SOPAG during her four year tenure as CDL’s representative to the group.

Ellen Meltzer has assumed the role of CDL HOPS representative, replacing Laine Farley, who held the post since 1999 - the beginning of the group’s current incarnation.  Ellen is the Information Services Manager and has been with CDL since 2001.  A special thanks to Laine for her significant contributions to the group during her long-running tenure as CDL’s HOPS representative.

By The Springer e-Book Task Force

The UC campuses have recently obtained perpetual access to nearly every Springer ebook published in English and German from 2005 to 2009, including Landolt-Bornstein, the largest compilation of data in physics and chemistry.  The collection includes nearly 20,000 books from every scientific discipline and many social sciences.

The licensing terms are in line with the UC Libraries’ Guiding Principles for Collecting Books in Electronic Format "Collection Development Committee, May 2008" including favorable Interlibrary Loan provisions, perpetual access, unlimited concurrent users, and digital rights management (DRM)-free PDF format.  In addition, the interface is familiar to users, as we have been subscribing to journals on SpringerLink for several years.
Books are available in the following categories:

• Architecture and Design 
• Behavioral Science 
• Biomedical and Life Sciences
• Business and Economics 
• Chemistry and Materials Science
• Computer Science
• Earth and Environmental Science
• Engineering
• Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• Mathematics and Statistics
• Medicine
• Physics and Astronomy
• Professional and Applied Computing

(There are a few books from 2005 to 2009 that are not accessible because they are jointly published with another publisher, and excluded from this project.)
The books will be linked from campus catalogs as well as from Melvyl, UC-eLinks and Google Scholar. They can also be browsed or searched directly at http://springerlink.com/.

This pilot will be used to study the viability of ebooks as a replacement for print books, including such factors as determining:

• which disciplines are more and less conducive to the use of electronic books
• which types of books might be more appropriate as ebooks
• which types might be less likely to be used in this format

A shared UC print copy of each of the books has been included in the package and it will be possible for users to order a print copy of any of the available books for $24.95 from Springer’s Print on Demand Service (MyCopy).

If you have questions and concerns please visit the Inside CDL page below for this resource.  You will find there a list of contacts including your campus contact.   You will also find a press release for your users, a poster/flyer and information about training as it becomes available.  The page is available at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/springerebooks/.

Further communications with more specific information will be going out to specific functional groups such as Collection Development, Acquisitions, Interlibrary Loans and Technical Services.

By Lena Zentall, Project Manager, Bibliographic Services

Interested in the progress of the CDL Electronic Resource Management System (CDL ERMS) project team?  We’ve created a project web page on InsideCDL: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/erms/.

As a central hub for information about the project, this page includes an overview of the project, the team, and the documents created by the project team and stakeholders.  All CDLINFO articles about the CDL ERMS are available from this page.  At this time, the following documents have been posted:

• CDL Electronic Resource Management Requirements, July 2008
• Implementation Team (iTeam) charge, November 2008

Campuses should feel free to contact Lena Zentall (lena.zentall@ucop.edu) with any questions about CDL’s implementation plans.

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

The February install updates applied to WorldCat, including the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot supported by WorldCat Local (WCL), were written by OCLC staff members Cheryl Snowdon, Bob Robertson-Boyd, Laura Endress, and Bob Schulz (with some clarifications added).  The updates are described below.

Enhancement:  Relevancy algorithm revised for the brief list of results
What it means for the user

This change

• boosts matches in Title and Author fields higher in the results
• demotes matches that don’t have the search query in the title but have large number of holdings - will keep irrelevant articles from journals with large number of holdings from being highly ranked
• boosts the importance of matches in the WorldCat database over other database matches - will also help keep irrelevant articles from being highly ranked
• improves search results for single word titles (Science, Nature) and classic works (Tom Sawyer)

Enhancement:  Search for articles within journals
Added “Journal/Magazine” field to Advanced Search after a user first selects the format “Article”.  [Note: users can already do this in another way: after searching for and retrieving a journal title, users then find a search box on the details page labeled “Search for articles in this publication”.]

What it means for the user
The user can more easily find an article of interest within a specific journal.

Example:

Enhancement:  Change to OpenURL resolver link for eBooks (installed on 1/20)
OCLC revised the OpenURL links to include ISBN and genre=book for all eBook links. This fix should ensure that OpenURLs received by SFX (UC-eLinks) always include at least one unique identifier and should not be diverted to the SFX MOM (multi-object menu).

What it means for the user
The user is more likely to get linked to the specific item in the OpenURL resolver for eBooks.

Example:

Enhancement:  Collapse multiple author display on detailed record
Items with many authors will now display the first line of authors with the rest collapsed under a “View all authors” selector.

What it means for the user
More compact display for items with many authors and contributors.

Example:

Enhancement:  More item purchase options
Added links to purchase items from Barnes & Noble and Better World Books.

What it means for the user
More options to obtain items for purchase; ability to compare prices amongst several booksellers.

Example:

Enhancement:  Tag Clouds in Item Pages
What it is
OCLC is now showing item tags as clouds so users can view tags as a list or a cloud. (See, for an example, the tags on a Harry Potter book.)
What it means for the user
This gives users more browse options.

Example:

Enhancement:  Tag Clouds on Lists
What it is
Tag clouds show all of the tags that have been used on all of the items in a list.  If a list has 10 items, the tag cloud for the list would include all of the tags that have been applied to each of the 10 items.

What it means for the user
The tag cloud on a list will give users a sense of the content of the list, and overview, from a folksonomy view, of what the list is about.  It also provides another browse option.

Example:

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

A PDF Version of CDL’s 2008 Profile which highlights “recent accomplishments, comments from our users, and beautiful images from UC’s collections” is now available from the CDL homepage: http://www.cdlib.org/news/index.html.

The report describes the activities CDL’s 5 program areas, provides a bit of CDL’s history since opening our “digital doors” in 1997, and contains a wealth of marvelous illustrations.  It is a wonderful introduction for those who want to know “what CDL does” and for faculty and donors as well.  Please share with your colleagues and other audiences.

Print copies are available by contacting Phyllis Baker (phyllis.baker@ucop.edu).

By Heather Christenson, CDL Mass Digitization Project Manager

2008 was a busy year for our UC Libraries’ book digitization activities.  We continue digitizing tens of thousands of books from our print collections from many libraries across UC.  In the latter half of 2008, our mass digitization projects have responded to significant changes and developments in the scholarly and commercial world: Microsoft decided to end its Live Search Books program which funded a portion of UC book digitization, Google announced a Settlement with authors and publishers, and UC allied with the University of Michigan, Indiana University, and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, or CIC (a consortium of Big Ten Plus universities in the Midwest) to anchor the new HathiTrust digital repository.  Throughout, we have continued to steadily digitize books in partnership with the Internet Archive and Google.

Partnership Developments
Microsoft ceased funding the Internet Archive scanning projects in June 2008.  Close to 150,000 public domain UC books were scanned with Microsoft funding under the auspices of the Live Search Books project.  Although Microsoft took down the Live Search Books website, all books digitized via the Microsoft project continue to be available in full text via Internet Archive and Open Library.  As a result of the loss of Microsoft funding for UC books scanning, we ceased scanning books from NRLF with Internet Archive and are now concentrating our efforts at NRLF on the Google project.

In October 2008, a settlement was signed between Google and a group of organizations representing publishers and authors alleging copyright infringement.  More information about the settlement is available on InsideCDL and the CDL web site.

Also in October 2008, the UC Libraries joined the HathiTrust digital repository.  From the HathiTrust web site:

“Launched jointly by the 12-university consortium known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and the 11 university libraries of the University of California system, the HathiTrust leverages the time-honored commitment to preservation and access to information that university libraries have valued for centuries.  UC’s participation will be coordinated by the California Digital Library (CDL), which brings its deep and innovative experience in digital curation and online scholarship to the HathiTrust.”

Read more about the HathiTrust.

At CDL
In addition to coordinating mass digitization activities across the UC campuses and digitization partners, in July 2008 CDL put the Mass Digitization Inventory Database (MDID) into production and conducted training for campus representatives.  MDID gives us an aggregate picture of the volume of our two major projects, and holds promise for future uses of the data.

We are beginning to actively engage with HathiTrust, including learning about the Hathitrust technical environment and planning for ingest of UC mass digitized books into the repository.

At the request of the University Librarians, a small working group with campus representation is currently being launched to investigate print-on-demand options for UC mass digitized books that are in the public domain.  More information will be reported on at the conclusion of this project, currently targeted for early summer.

On campus
NRLF, UCSD and UCSC continue their significant effort and contributions to the Google project.  At UCSD, we have been working in the International Relations and Pacific Studies Library, the East Asian Library, and have recently begun working in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library.  UCSC is digitizing items from the McHenry Library.  At NRLF, we continue to work through the shelves at a truly impressive rate.

In July of 2008, the Internet Archive scanning center at NRLF moved to San Francisco, where Internet Archive continues to run it.  In December 2008, CDL presented NRLF with an award for their long-running efforts and for making history as the first Internet Archive/Open Content Alliance scanning location in the United States.

In October 2008, we launched a project with UC Davis to scan California Dept. of Water Resources Bulletins and Bureau of Mines Bulletins.  UC Davis volumes were shipped to the Internet Archive scanning center in San Francisco, and work is nearly complete.  This effort offered both CDL and UC Davis an opportunity to learn how to organize and execute a smaller-scale mass digitization project with a new campus partner on a short timeframe.  More information about the project can be found in the related CDLINFO posting.

The Internet Archive scanning center at SRLF continues to operate at an impressive rate, and SRLF staff’s patience and efficiency have been central to this effort.  All of the English language pre-1923 books originally targeted for digitization at SRLF – close to 93,000 volumes – have recently been completed.

I am pleased to report that amongst all of our projects collectively UC has digitized over 1.8 million volumes.

For more information about our UC Mass Digitization projects, and about where to get access to our digitized books, please see the recently updated information and FAQ on InsideCDL.

By Karen Andrews, Head, Physical Sciences and Engineering Library, UC Davis

As part of UC’s mass digitization scanning efforts, the library of the University of California, Davis, in consultation with the Government Information Librarians (GILS) bibliographers group, and the Internet Archive is currently engaged in two important digitization projects.  The first is the digitization of the Bulletin of the California Division of Mines and Geology and the second is the digitization of the Bulletin of the California Department of Water Resources.  With over 1,100 issues, both these resources have information that will be of interest to scholars, professionals, and the general public.

The Bulletin of the California Division of Mines and Geology covers the years 1888 to 2001.  These volumes have basic information, including maps, about the geology of California on both statewide and local levels.  They also contain information about the state’s mineral resources, including gold deposits and mining.  There are geologic guidebooks, some covering locales that may no longer be accessible.  Some volumes cover geologic topics like urban geology from a statewide view.

The digitization project for the Bulletin of the California Department of Water Resources covers the years 1922 to 2004.  These volumes contain huge amounts of data concerning nearly all aspects of water in California.  There is information on water law, water projects, groundwater, water quality, flooding, and water conditions.  Very often the volumes contain maps and fold-outs.  Some volumes describing major floods of the past are of great historical interest.

The documents come from the collection of the UC Davis Physical Sciences & Engineering Library, with a few volumes supplied by the UC Berkeley Geology Library to fill in gaps.

The scanning is being conducted by the Internet Archive in San Francisco.  Funding for the scanning project is provided by Kahle/Austin Foundation and Omidyar Network.  The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.

Upon completion (scheduled for late spring) the scanned collections will be immediately available to the public via the Internet Archive web site at http://www.archive.org/.  To view documents completed to date, conduct a search for "caminesgeo" or try "cawaterres" to retrieve examples.

Eventually, there will be links to the Internet Archive images from within the UC Davis Harvest Catalog and the Melvyl Catalog.