CDLINFO

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

Several enhancements were made to Next Generation Melvyl with OCLC’s Sunday, November 8, install
The changes include:

• Parenthetical (Boolean) support in search queries.  You can now use parentheses to create more precise searches.  A search on dog (walking OR feeding OR grooming) will return results for dog walking OR dog feeding OR dog grooming.
• Additional custom web links.  With the approval of UC Heads of Public Services (HOPS), two additional links soon will be added for each campus in the dropdown menu under the library name (e.g., UCR Libraries).  These will link to the campus Article Database and E-journal links, among the most heavily used links in current Melvyl.
• Improvements in treating some item types as a different item type by configuring certain tags, subfields and/or values contained in the data.
• Improvements to “Browse similar items” in the “carousel” on the “Similar items” section of the detailed record.
• Changes to Details section for remote database records.
• Upon saving a search, users will now receive confirmation that their search has been saved and will see a link to their profile page to view their saved searches.

Please see the PDF for more details.

By Patricia Martin, Director, Discovery & Delivery

Do you know what the name Bibliographic Services means? We couldn’t agree on it either, so we decided to change the name of our team from Bibliographic Services to a name that better describes the services we provide as a CDL team.  The team that brings you Melvyl®, Next Generation Melvyl®, UC-eLinks, and Request is now the Discovery & Delivery team.

How is this name more relevant to what we’re doing? We’ve seen a shift in the way scholars do research. Discovery and delivery are tightly aligned services — researchers expect access to publications at the same time as they find them. The core library services we provide extend beyond managing bibliographic data — we’re connecting people to what they want. UC-eLinks, for example, is a popular web application that provides UC faculty and students with a quick and reliable way to link directly to articles from the library catalog or other sites like PubMed or Google Scholar.

What can you expect from the Discovery & Delivery team looking forward? We’re building on our years of metadata expertise and expanding further into the delivery realm. We’re exploring new territory in collaborative initiatives like Hathi Trust, where members of our team recently implemented an open-source page turner for the mass digitized books on the Hathi Trust website.

Where will you see our team’s new name? You will see Discovery & Delivery on the CDL website early next year. Our name is 100% acronym free, but you can call us the D&D team for short. We have already garnered several nicknames, including “disco-tech” for our technical team.

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

In its September 13, 2009 install, OCLC made improvements to the display of electronic resources in the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot. The changes were made to help users better distinguish between links to online materials for which they have access as opposed to links from other libraries to which they may not have access.

Here are some of the modifications:

• If a journal is available in both print and electronic, under “Find a copy online”, users will now see the first 3 links to electronic content that are also found in their local campus catalog. Clicking on one of the links takes a user either directly to the journal or to the UC-eLinks window.
• Links also appear for open access items such as government publications and digital content.
• Other links may be provided by non-UC libraries instead of from the campus, but are displayed separately under “Other libraries.”
• If there are no local or other links and no full text OpenURL resolver to display, then  ‘Find a copy online’ will not display at all.

See the PDF from OCLC for more details on these last changes.

(Also in the document is more complete information on the use of local holdings records (LHRs) to display some serial data in the detailed record instead of making a call to the local OAPC for the data, a feature which will be added at a later date for the UC Libraries.)

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

Starting on Wednesday, August 19th, users visiting http://melvyl.cdlib.org are being directed to the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot as the default search.  The page still offers a link to current Melvyl.

As a reminder, the NGM Executive and Implementation Teams decided that we needed to extend the pilot as well as assess the robustness of the product under peak load during the fall quarter/semester.  We rarely have the opportunity to fully test drive software in such circumstances before purchase.  We recommend that all campuses point to WorldCat Local (WCL) as the default union catalog beginning on August 19, 2009.  Current Melvyl will remain available during this period, but its landing page has been modified to encourage users to use it as a secondary choice.

We especially appreciate and acknowledge the effort campuses are undertaking to make this evaluation period a success.

Several configuration changes are being implemented as we point to NGM:

The Request button will take users directly to the Request service.

• When users click on the Request button, they will be taken directly to Request rather than an intermediary UC-eLinks screen.  Full integration of Request and NGM will take place later this fall though the experience for end-users will remain the same.

All Request buttons will be named the same (Request) and will appear at Levels 2 and 3 on a record for an item not available locally.

• If an item is not held at the local campus but is available at UC Libraries (Level 2) and WorldCat Local Libraries (Level 3), a Request button will appear at both Level 2 and 3.  If the item is only held at one of those levels, the Request button will only appear once.

The UC-eLinks button will be turned off for monograph and serial holdings.

• To improve the user experience, the UC-eLinks button will be removed from some item types on the full record display (e.g., print books, DVDs etc.)  Previously, users were offered a “Get it online” option for items that were available in physical format only.  After the 19th, “Get it online” will not display for items that are not available electronically.

• Since the UC-eLinks button will not appear on all item types, users may need to use the Request button at the UC Libraries (Level 2) or at WorldCat Libraries (Level 3) to initiate document delivery services.

In the UC-eLinks menu, Next Generation Melvyl will display above the current Melvyl Catalog link.

The “Get Help” link will take users to a Contact Us or Ask a Librarian page as requested by each campus.

• Users will be able to more easily access research assistance at each campus.  The Next Generation Melvyl “Help” page will no longer be linked from “Get Help”.  Instead the link will go directly to the campus “Ask a Librarian” service, as recommended by the UC Heads of Public Services (HOPS).

856 links will be disabled for articles.

• Links to articles in WCL will only be accessible through the UC-eLinks button in the "Get it online" section since 856 links for articles have been taking users to the journal level but not to the article level.  Therefore, pointing users to the UC-eLinks button will provide the most reliable access to electronic article content.  Please note that we will continue to expose 856 links in the "Get it online" section for other item types including journal records and e-books.

We anticipate that there will be a shakedown period in which irregularities may be discovered and we will work to repair these as quickly as possible.  Please use the Feedback links on the NGM interface to notify us of any problems you encounter.

In addition to the changes above, the following changes were implemented on Sunday, August 16th with OCLC’s monthly install:

Search for Libraries
Users can search for libraries by keyword or location by going to the Search dropdown menu on the upper left side of the Home screen.

• Search results depend on the type of search.  For example,
• A keyword/library name search will return search results of all libraries with the search term(s) in the library name or library alias.  Results will be ordered alphabetically.
• A location search such as “city, state” will return search results listed alphabetically by library name within that location.

• Once the search results are retrieved, you can filter results by specific library types available in a Library Type drop down menu, e.g., ARL Library, Academic Library.

Corrected Text Display
The link text displays in the appropriate “Resource” column and the link description appears in the “Description” column.  Previously, each set of text displayed in the wrong column.

See the PDF from OCLC for more details on these last changes.

By Patricia Martin, CDL Director of Bibliographic Services

This is the first in a series of reports from CDL’s Bibliographic Services team.

On Wednesday, June 24th UC Berkeley publicly introduced OskiCat, their new integrated library system purchased from Innovative Interfaces Inc.  (III), replacing the GLADIS and Pathfinder systems.  CDL congratulates UC Berkeley for pulling off a very difficult migration, in record time.  It’s a huge achievement!

But wait!  What does UC Berkeley’s achievement have to do with the CDL Bib Services team?  The Bib Services team played a huge and largely hidden role during this migration.  At the same time that UCB was laboring to go live with OskiCat, we were busy making sure that OskiCat worked smoothly with UC-eLinks, Request, Melvyl AND WorldCat Local (WCL), and prepared for UCB’s records to be reloaded into classic Melvyl (which is happening later this summer).

Here are some of the major Bibliographic Services team milestones of the past year.

7 million records, multiple snapshots, detailed analysis, WorldCat configuration – OskiCat Transition!
When faced with the decision by UCB to migrate to III, CDL veterans and survivors of the UCLA migration to Voyager paused, gulped and pulled out their notes.  Rebecca Doherty served as the Project Manager and main liaison with UCB, and Lynne Cameron assured us it was only a matter of “export, delete, add in the new UCB records, import all, index and merge”; it takes about 6 weeks of indexing and merging to process all 33 million records.  If all goes well, this should be complete by the end of August, in time for UCB’s fall semester.

WorldCat Local
In addition to keeping UCB’s catalog records up to date in Melvyl (now known as “classic Melvyl”), Bib Services and Ellen Meltzer’s Information Services team have been working on the WorldCat Local pilot, with Leslie Wolf as our project manager.  CDL is moving to a more formalized “evaluation phase” of WorldCat Local, scheduled to start in late August, when UCM and UCB begin classes.  This will allow us to stress-test WorldCat Local during our peak active months of October and November, and will provide valuable performance information.  At the end of the evaluation phase in December 2009, CDL will present its evaluation and recommendations to the Executive Team and University Librarians.  We will continue to run classic Melvyl for the foreseeable future.

ERMS
Lena Zentall, our Electronic Resources Management System (ERMS) project manager, along with Margery Tibbetts and Adam Brin, have been working collaboratively with Ivy Anderson’s Collection Development & Management team — both at CDL and distributed throughout UC — to implement our long dreamed of electronic resources management software.  UCLA has also recently purchased the same Serials Solutions ERMS product and Lena is in regular contact with them to share information and expertise.

Request and UC-eLinks
Sherry Willhite, Michael Thwaites, Debra Bartling and Bob Brandriff have been working steadily on implementing Request in WorldCat Local, at the same time dealing with the daily challenges of keeping the Request service and its components up and running.  Debra has been faced with some tough troubleshooting for VDX (UC’s consortial borrowing software) but has still found time to document and prepare VDX for the upcoming migration to VDX 4.1, and to develop a data warehouse approach to VDX reporting. Claudia Woo is now the Bibliographic Services JReport (database reporting interface tool) expert, and Leslie Wolf has taken on the role of project manager for the Request team. 

For UC-eLinks, Margery Tibbetts, Adam Brin, and Lena Zentall have implemented direct linking to electronic articles, making our endusers’ lives significantly easier.

HathiTrust
Lynne Cameron is CDL’s HahtiTrust co-Technical Lead and is working with Bob Brandriff and Adam Brin on bibliographic metadata issues.  Adam has also been tasked with overseeing the tight integration of HathiTrust into WorldCat Local.  To round out our efforts here, Stephanie Collett is working on an improved page turner for the public interface, and the Bib Services Technical Team has provided feedback on the HathiTrust Data API.

Strategic Planning and KPIs
Leslie Wolf and Lena Zentall have been leading the effort to structure Bib Service’s strategic planning, and to make sure planning aligns with CDL’s and UCOP’s efforts.  They have led the team in developing accountability measures, including key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics.  Look for more in this area over the next few weeks.

By Ellen Meltzer, Manager, Information Services

The UC Berkeley Library is replacing its GLADIS/Pathfinder/Innopac systems with an Innovative Interfaces, Inc.  (III) Millennium system and is renaming the catalog "OskiCat."  CDL has been working intensively for several months with Ex Libris and the UCB library to ensure a smooth transition in the Melvyl Catalog from UCB’s GLADIS holdings to its III holdings.  Part of this process has included the deletion of UCB’s five and a half million old records and the addition of more than six million new records into the Melvyl Catalog.

The Melvyl Catalog will be frozen between July 15 and August 30.  Please advise your users that since no new records will be added during the freeze, users will not receive their usual Automatic Updates.

A suspension in Melvyl Catalog loading causes some temporary issues with Request which are usually transparent to end users.  Request obtains holdings/availability via the classic Melvyl interface for all items including requests that originate from classic Melvyl, Next Generation Melvyl, UC-eLinks, and PubMed Order.  Item availability comes from the campus OPAC, with the Request service checking the campus circulation server.

The database with the new UCB snapshot records in it will be switched into production on August 31.  This process should be invisible to catalog users.

A full description of this complex process follows:

Due to limitations with the Ex Libris software, CDL cannot use the normal database update programs to replace UCB’s records.  Instead, all 32 plus million records must be exported from the database and the existing UCB records removed.  The exported records, plus the new UCB records, will be fast loaded (i.e. loaded without indexing) into a new database, and then all records will be indexed and merged.  The CDL anticipates that this process will take six to seven weeks.

This activity will take place in a duplicate copy of the database on a different machine so that the intensive processing will not impact response time in the production system.

Loading will proceed more quickly in the rebuilt database if the number of records accumulated in the six to seven week maintenance period is held to a minimum.  For this reason, CDL has requested that records associated with special projects be held during this time.

The following is the latest version of the schedule of activities (subject to revision) for the project:

July 15: Reload/reindex/remerge will begin in a copy of the production database.

July 15 – August 30: The loading of all campus records will be frozen in the production database.

August 31: The newly reloaded database will become the production database.

October 5:  The backlog of frozen weekly files will be cleared for all campuses.

Normal loading will resume for all campuses.

CDL will provide information about any revisions to this schedule.

By Ellen Meltzer, Manager, Information Services

Several changes were brought into the June 2009 install for the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot on June 14th.  These changes are described in detail in the PDF, and include the following:

Changes to the Advanced Screen
These changes were made in anticipation of additional databases for searching in the WorldCat Local interface.  (The UC Libraries are currently evaluating when to adopt this service.)  

• ISBN, ISSN, and Accession Number are each a separate index now.  Accession Number is the OCLC number.
• The number of search boxes has been reduced from five static boxes to three dropdown boxes.

Changes to Advanced Search Limiter Display
The order of the limiters has been changed and the “Publication Date” limiter has been renamed “Year”.  “Library” and “Year” are now the first and second limiters.  After that, the limiters are alphabetical.  These changes were made in anticipation of additional databases for searching in the WorldCat Local interface. 

Libraries Worldwide (WorldCat) is now Libraries Worldwide
The scoping option “Libraries Worldwide (WorldCat)” was renamed Libraries Worldwide.  This change was made in anticipation of additional databases for searching in the WorldCat Local interface.  Renaming the scope will reduce confusion with the database WorldCat (FirstSearch). 
Note: Again, the UC libraries are evaluating when to adopt this service.

Expanded link name changed to “Cite/Export”
OCLC has renamed the link for the citations tool on the detailed record from “Cite” to “Cite/Export” to be more informative to the user.  The tooltip message upon mouse-over on this link also provides more information to the user.

WorldCat Identities is being integrated into WorldCat Local
WorldCat Identities is now fully integrated into the user interface for WorldCat Local. This will provide a consistent user experience throughout the user’s discovery experience.

Privacy settings display on your WorldCat user profile
When viewing your WorldCat user profile, the privacy settings for your favorite libraries, lists, saved searches, email and profile will now be displayed on the initial summary page.  If an object is marked as ‘Private’ it will not be shared with the rest of the WorldCat community on the public view of your profile.  You can change this setting from the summary page of each area; to get to the summary page, click on the header of the section (e.g., “Favorite Libraries”).

By Ellen Meltzer, Manager, Information Services

The enhancements listed below were brought into WorldCat Local by OCLC over the weekend of 5/17/09, with the exception of the first two items which are being undertaken for the Next Generation Melvyl (NGM) Pilot only.  Because several of these require parallel changes on the UC side, you will see them implemented over the next two weeks, rather than immediately.  Those that will be phased in are indicated with asterisks: **.  These and additional changes are described in the attached PDF file.

For Next Generation Melvyl Pilot Users Only**
We’ve received a significant number of problem reports since the April WorldCat Local release regarding the UC-eLinks button appearing on records without electronic access.  We will be changing the configuration so that the UC-eLinks button appears only when electronic materials or articles are available. 

Because the Request feature in NGM is still in development, we will be enabling a "Request via UC-eLinks" button to ensure patrons can request interlibrary loan materials for books and journals.  When Request is fully available, users will see the Request button you’ve come to know and love in the NGM interface.

Change default sort order**
It is now possible to set the default sort order for WorldCat Local.  This is the sort order in which the search results will display; however, users can change the sort order during their session.  This new feature allows us to set the default sort order to:

> Location/Relevance(default)
> Relevance only
> Author (A-Z)
> Title (A-Z)
> Date (Oldest First)
> Date (Newest First)

Important: The UC libraries will be changing the default sort to Relevance only.  When this feature was tested in usability tests, users voiced a strong preference for seeing the most relevant items on a topic regardless of location vs. the most relevant items at the local campus.

“Ask A Librarian” icon added to tool bar on detailed record**
[Note: For UC patrons, this is currently “Get Help” instead of “Ask a Librarian” and we are investigating how this may work in the future. ]

If your library has configured an “ask a librarian” custom web link as one of the three links that now displays in the dropdown on the global header, a new icon will display on the tool bar (on the detailed record) with the print, cite, email options.  When the user clicks on the icon a new window will open taking the user to the URL configured for the link.

Author Names and Links to OCLC Identities
The author links on detailed records will now conduct a search on those author names in the WorldCat Local database itself.  Links to OCLC Identities will be moved down to the Details section under a drop-down selector.  (This change reverses a feature that was brought in in OCLC’s April Install.)

E-mail Item Now with Editable Subject and Message
For e-mail messages sent from the e-mail option users can now customize the subject and message body fields.  Users of this service in Next Gen Melvyl have requested this for some time.

WorldCat Library Profile Pages
You will now be able to view a library profile for each WorldCat library.  From the list of libraries on the item details page and from your favorite libraries list in the user profile – you can access this new page with even more valuable information about a library including location and contact info, links to the library’s website, catalog and virtual reference.  (Note: This information is pulled from the WorldCat Registry – library staff may want to check your WorldCat Registry information to make sure it is up to date.  This is up to the campuses to do individually, separate from this project.)

The library profile will also include a list of recent items added to WorldCat by this library.  WorldCat will create this list each month for item holding set the previous month – this list will be ordered by items with the most holdings across WorldCat.

If your library offers the WorldCat Local service, this page will let users know it is available and allow them to execute a search that takes them to your site for availability information and more.

By Ellen Meltzer, Manager, Information Services

Over the weekend of April 19th, a number of changes were brought into Next Generation Melvyl, supported by WorldCat Local (WCL).  These changes are especially noticeable on the detailed record display.  Many of these improvements were created based on the feedback, comments, and teamwork of UC librarians, users and staff, and the work of the Assessment and the Implementation Teams.  Below is a very detailed description (in PDF format) of these improvements (30 pages long), along with a second PDF with later changes to the original document from OCLC.

Among the changes implemented on Monday, April 20th were the following:

• Email opens a window that allows the user to send an email with item details, including the call number
• Print opens the print dialog box
• Access to electronic content (“Get this item” service) has been improved
• Smooth scrolling
• Layered opening and closing of windows
• Global views (header, global menus, toolbar and footer) displayed at all times on the detailed record
• Links in the upper portion of the screen will change a bit from those now listed; users will see two possible sign-ins: one for their campus library (My library), if possible, and one for WorldCat
• The Toolbar will now allow users to export to RefWorks and EndNote via the “Cite” option; an array of citation styles is still included
• There are additional improvements for adding ratings, reviews, adding to lists, adding tags
• The bibliographic data is laid out more clearly
• More like this” links are clearer

Please note that OCLC made the following emendations to the information above, and these are described in fuller detail [PDF]:

1. OCLC has made some changes to the My WorldCat menu in the Global Menus (referenced in section 2.1.2).  (Screen shots are in the attached PDF.)

2. Sending an item via e-mail.  In Section 2.2.1, OCLC described the ability to send local item information via email which included editing the message before sending.  At the present time, users will not be able to edit the subject or notes section of the email form.  With these fields being editable there is an increased risk for spamming to occur.  Within the next month or two OCLC will be adding CAPTCHA functionality (a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer) to mitigate this risk.  At that time, OCLC will add back the ability to edit these fields.

3. An author search box has been added to author area of the details section (referenced in the attached document in section 3.1.4.)  This will conduct an au: search for the author name selected.

4. For May, OCLC will be adding an "Ask a Librarian" link to the toolbar (section 2.2) if the institution has configured a custom web link.  This link should open in a new window.

By Ellen Meltzer, Manager, Information Services

We continue our partnership with OCLC to implement NGM.  The current Melvyl and Next Generation Melvyl will run in parallel until such time as OCLC has met UC’s critical needs for the Melvyl Catalog.  The decision to move completely to NGM supported by WCL will not be finalized until UC is confident that UC’s service needs are met.

There were a number of enhancements brought into Next Generation Melvyl supported by WorldCat Local (WCL) on Sunday, March 15.  They include the following (and are described in greater detail as a PDF below this posting): 

• Saving a search from a search results page
• More display options for lists
• Larger list sizes
• View counts on lists and profiles
• Library affiliation privacy setting
• Cover art on search results and editions pages
• WorldCat Keyword Search Widget
• Searching 776 OCLC number from associated eSerial or eBook number

This last item affects UC’s users in a positive way.  For serials, with UC’s policy of single-record technique, our e-access is very frequently associated with the print version record.  If a user has limited a search to e-versions through faceting, this feature is likely to be a very big help.  This also means our libraries need not switch the UC cataloging policy for serials to separate record technique, which would be extremely costly.

UC’s cataloging policy for e-monographs is separate record technique.  From now until Shared Cataloging Program (SCP) reclamation is completed for e-monographs, this change will result in some payoff.  After reclamation is completed, OCLC’s change would be moot.

You can find detailed information on these enhancements at http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/20090315_InstallUpdate_Notice4.pdf.