CDLINFO

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

The findings and recommendations summary report of the UC usability tests conducted on the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot in spring 2008 at UC Berkeley and UC Irvine is now available online at the Pilot Web site, at http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/WCL_Summary_03Sept2008.pdf

The report, by Arnold Arcolio, Program Analyst, OCLC Programs and Research, and Felicia Poe, Assessment &Design Manager, CDL, describes the objectives, methodology, findings and recommendations of the usability testing on the Next Generation Melvyl supported by WorldCat Local, and also includes a list of usability tasks.  The report has been reviewed and discussed by the UC Implementation and Executive Teams, by the Joint UC-OCLC Executive Team, and by key OCLC staff.  Some of the recommendations in the report have already been implemented.

A second round of usability testing is planned for later in the development of the pilot.

By Jayne Dickson, CDL Helpline Manager

The Google Books Search feature, which allows users to find books digitized by the University of California and other Google Books partners, is now available in the Melvyl Catalog and the campus WorldCat Local (WCL) implementations.  Depending on the copyright status of the book, Google will return a full text view, a limited preview, a snippet, or a record view.

Occasionally, book links in the catalog records link incorrectly to another book. For example, the link for the Albert L. Lehninger’s book titled “Short course in biochemistry” links incorrectly to “Ifādāt va malfūzāt-i Hazrat Maulānā ‘Ubaidullāh Sindhī” by Muhammad Sarvar, ‘Ubaidullāh Sindhī via the Google Books Search API.

The best way to report these mis-links and other problems with the Google Books content is to use the Melvyl Catalog and/or Next Generation Melvyl WorldCat Local (WCL) implementation feedback links (located at the bottom of the web page) to report the problem to CDL. Be sure to include the book’s citation information along with a brief description of what was wrong (e.g., mis-links, digitized content missing pages, etc.).

CDL investigates the reported problems and then forwards these on to the appropriate entities, including Google.

By Hunter Stern, CDL Technical Writer

Will the Homeland Security and No Child Left Behind websites disappear on January 20th 2009?  The answer might surprise you.  January 20th 2009 will mark the beginning of a new presidential administration and the coincident end of the current administration, putting much of the online material related to its policies and initiatives at risk.  According to the Washington Post, “Many federal agency records exist only in digital form and are in danger of disappearing when the administration changes” (August 20, 2008).

The University of California community, not to mention scholars the world over, require perpetual access to these online materials in the normal conduct of research, teaching, and learning. Even without a change in administration, government records stored in digital form are notoriously volatile.  Web pages on government sites have an average life span of only 44 days.

To ensure that the historical record of the current administration is not lost, a partnership of government and nonprofit agencies has taken responsibility for its preservation.  The University of California – California Digital Library (CDL), in partnership with the Library of Congress, the Government Printing Office (GPO), the Internet Archive (IA), and the University of North Texas Libraries (UNTL) are planning the harvest and archival storage of more than 100 million US government web pages from the second George W. Bush administration.  This effort will involve the comprehensive harvest of the .gov domain as well as focused Web harvests of specific government agencies.  The goal is to conduct a broad capture of all Federal government Web sites, and a deep capture of specific high-priority sites that have been chosen by the project’s curators.  Each partner plays a critical role in the project.

The California Digital Library, a recipient of a Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) grant, leads the Web-at-Risk project, a goal of which is “to develop tools that enable librarians and archivists to capture, curate, preserve, and provide access to web-based government and political information.”  These tools will be put to use doing deep crawls of specific government agencies ranked as priority sites by the project’s curators.  In addition to CDL, UNTL will be responsible for conducting deep crawls.

The broad crawl will be the responsibility of the Internet Archive, a non-profit group providing universal and permanent access to digital information for educators, researchers, and the general public.  IA will use its advanced Web-crawling software, called Heritrix, to capture the intended sites.

In order to prioritize the vast list of URLs included in the scope of the crawl, the University of North Texas has designed a software tool that allows curators to nominate URLs for harvest and tag them with numeric rankings.

The Library of Congress, which has preserved congressional Web sites since December 2003, will focus on developing the overall harvesting plan.  The GPO and the libraries in its Federal Depository Library Program will assist in the curation process.

For more information on the End of Term project contact Patricia Cruse (patricia.cruse@ucop.edu), Director, Digital Preservation Program.

By Wendy Parfrey, CDL Shared Content Negotiator

As part of its collaborative mission, every year CDL purchases perpetual rights to scholarly digital content using end-of-year funds.  This growing collection of content provides permanent digital rights on behalf of future generations of UC faculty and students in varied disciplines across the sciences and humanities.

Often CDL’s perpetual purchases result in a waiver or substantial reduction in ongoing annual subscription fees, thus offering long-term cost savings to campuses.

This year, in addition to CDL’s purchases, a number of campuses stepped forward to offer their end-of-year funds for acquisitions on behalf of the consortium or interested campuses.  The following is a summary of scholarly content recently purchased by CDL and UC libraries:

American Chemical Society (ACS) Legacy Archive
      Purchased by Los Angeles, Merced, Berkeley and LBL on behalf of all campuses.

ARTstor
      Archive capital fee (perpetual rights) funded by CDL on behalf of nine campuses.

Blackwell Archive
      Complete Blackwell ejournal archive purchased by CDL and Santa Cruz on behalf of all campuses.

C19: Index to the 19th Century (ProQuest)
Requested by several bibliographer groups in 2007, approved by CDC and purchased by CDL on behalf of all campuses.

Institute of Physics Archive
      Europhysics Letters and Physica Scripta purchased by San Diego on behalf of all campuses.

Nature Archives
1869-1949 archive purchased by CDL on behalf of all campuses.  UC now owns all Nature content back to Volume 1, Issue 1.  This was a one-time buy-out of annual fees for all Nature archives, purchased by CDL on behalf of all campuses.  As a result of this purchase, ongoing annual fees for Nature archives are now waived in perpetuity.

Sage Archive
      Complete Sage ejournal archive purchased by CDL on behalf of all campuses.

The Sixties (Alexander Street Press)
Santa Cruz purchased on behalf of Berkeley, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego (to complement UCSC’s special collection, the Grateful Dead Archives!).  Pre-publication – to be released soon.

By Lena Zentall, CDL UC Image Service Manager

The UC Libraries Collection Development Committee (CDC) has appointed collection liaisons for UC Shared Images – one from each campus, to facilitate collection building in ARTstor.  The liaisons will work directly with ARTstor on building hosted image collections, and they will be the primary contact for anyone interesting in hosting a collection in ARTstor on their campus.  The liaisons will advise potential contributors on the characteristics of a desirable collection, the minimum submission standards, image quality standards, and other hosting requirements.

The liaisons will take the lead in forming collection development and management groups on their campuses.  The purpose of the groups is to bring together campus stakeholders to discuss priorities and best options for developing and managing collections at each campus.  Foremost, the groups would decide which local campus image collections may be loaded into ARTstor as institutional hosted collections.

CDL has created an email list for the collection liaisons group as a forum to discuss UC-wide shared collection development best practices.

The Collection Liaisons roster and the collection development program proposal are posted on the Image Service website under “Collection Development”.

For more information, read the CDLInfo article on Preparing for UC Shared Images strategic collection building, June 18, 2008.

By Felicia Poe, CDL Assessment, Design & Production Manager

Please join me in bidding farewell and good luck to our CDL colleague, Pamela Daniels, who has announced her retirement from the University of California.

Pam was recruited by the CDL Digital Library Services Group from her UC Berkeley post in August 2001 in order to assist the team working on the transition of the Melvyl® Catalog to the Ex Libris ALEPH software platform.  Upon her arrival, she assumed the role of bibliographic analyst, in support of the development of the Melvyl database and user interface.  Pam’s original assignment was expected to last just one year, but she quickly proved herself to be an invaluable addition to the CDL, and her temporary assignment was repeatedly extended, until her leave in late 2006.

During her CDL tenure, Pam quickly gained the respect of her colleagues, and her assistance was frequently requested.  Besides her significant contributions to the Melvyl Operations Team, Pam held a position on the CDL Web Production Team, providing her with the opportunity to contribute to user interface development on the Metasearch Project, Counting California, the Image Service Project, OAC, the American West Project, Calisphere, and the decommissioning of the CDL Directory of Licensed Content.  Pam also contributed to the CDL through her role as CDL Staff Council convener.

Pam began working at UC Berkeley Libraries in July 1975 while still an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. After graduating, she accepted a career position at the UCB Government Documents Department in 1979, and then moved to the Periodicals Department (1982), the Serials Department (1984), and later, Technical Services.  Before joining CDL in 2001, Pam was the Assistant Head of the Monographic Processing and Cataloging Division of the UCB Library.