California Digital Library

Report to the Digital Library Federation
Fall, 2003

Table Of Contents

l Collections, services, and systems

l Projects and programs

l Specific digital library challenges

l Digital library publications, policies, working papers, and other documents

 

I. Collections, services, and systems

A. Collections and Services

 

The California Digital Library provides access to scholarly materials, databases of journal article abstracts and citations, electronic journals, publishing tools, and reference databases for the University of California community.

 

The CDL also builds collections and provides public access to cultural heritage materials though a variety of innovative programs, such as programs that host digital government information and programs that assist in the creation and dissemination of UC-produced scholarship. In addition, the CDL pursues technological innovations that enhance services for accessing, sharing, manipulating, and integrating scholarly content in all forms.

 

CDL collections and services include:

 

CaliforniaDigitalLibrary.org: Provides a single point of access for the publicly available digital collections produced or managed by UC.

http://www.californiadigitallibrary.org/

 

CDL Image Demonstrator: Allows users to search and view a collection of art and architecture images drawn from museum and art collections.

 

Counting California: Offers "one-stop shopping" for government data and statistics about California. http://countingcalifornia.cdlib.org/

 

Directory of CDL-Licensed Content: Lists the CDL's extensive collections of digital resources, including article databases, more than 8,000 electronic journals, and reference texts. http://www.cdlib.org/directory/

 

eScholarship Editions: Provides access to digital texts and monographs, including more than 1400 UC Press titles. More than 400 of the ebooks are available to the public.

http://texts.cdlib.org/escholarship/

 

eScholarship Publications: Showcases other publications from the eScholarship program, including interactive publications from the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, legacy online journals such as Dermatology Online Journal, and monographs from the UC International and Area Studies Digital Collection.

 

eScholarship Repository: This free, open-access repository infrastructure supports the full range of scholarly output, from pre-publication materials to journals and peer-reviewed series, by offering UC departments direct control of publishing.

http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/

 

Melvyl Catalog: A searchable catalog of library materials from the 10 UC campuses, the California State Library, the California Academy of Sciences, the California Historical Society, the Center for Research Libraries, the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics Library, the Graduate Theological Union, the Hastings College of the Law Library, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Library.

http://melvyl.cdlib.org/

 

Online Archive of California (OAC): Federates collections of digital materials such as manuscripts, photographs, and art held in the libraries, museums, and archives across California through a single, searchable database.

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/

 

Request: Enables UC faculty, students, and staff to enter requests from the Melvyl Catalog and journal article databases for materials. Items not available at a user's home campus are delivered via Interlibrary Loan, while items available at a user's home campus are delivered through the document delivery service.

 

SearchLight: Allows simultaneous searches across multiple journal databases, book catalogs, and other information sources available through the CDL and the UC campuses.

http://searchlight.cdlib.org/cgi-bin/searchlight

 

UC-eLinks: provides a way to easily move from an article or book citation in an article database to the full online content of the item, or, for print materials, to automatically look for a UC library location of the item.

 

C. Systems

 

Melvyl – the largest implementation of Ex Libris’ ALEPH
The legacy version of the University of California’s Melvyl Catalog was retired August 1, 2003, replaced by a new Melvyl catalog which can be found at http://melvyl.cdlib.org . Melvyl has a new format and design, offers users a variety of enhanced features, and contains completely updated data for the library holdings of the UC system.

 

The Melvyl catalog of the University of California (UC) contains over 23 million records for material held by the libraries of the 10 campuses of the UC system. The database is updated continually as material is ordered, received, and cataloged by the libraries. Material from libraries of selected University partners is also represented, including records from Hastings School of Law, the Center for Research Libraries, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, the California Academy of Sciences Library, the California Historical Society Library, and the Graduate Theological Union Library. Records from the California State Library will be added by the end of 2003.

 

Melvyl contains entries for many materials in formats beyond books and journals (e.g., manuscripts, maps, visual media, microforms and government documents) owned by the UC Libraries. In addition, predefined subsets of the catalog have been created to allow dedicated searching for online resources, for musical scores, and for sound recordings.

 

Immediately evident in the new catalog are refined and expanded search features that are a significant advance over the legacy Melvyl catalog, itself long known throughout the world as a pioneer in presenting effective features to patrons.

 

Among the important new features in Melvyl-T:

 

l More flexible search options, including phrase and proximity searching.

l Browsing by major indexes including author, title, subject, and call number.

l Expanded limiting and sorting of search results.

l Display of foreign language materials using their native language characters, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, and Arabic.

l Ability to return to previous searches and combine, review, or save them into a personal workspace.

 

While the new search and display features are available to all users of Melvyl – both within and outside of UC – an additional feature gives UC faculty, students, and staff the ability to borrow material from another campus if unavailable at their home campus via a simple “Request” button, an element brought forward from legacy Melvyl. http://melvyl.cdlib.org/

 

Image Demonstrator based on Luna’s Insight. Seeks to assess Luna Insight as a presentation and management platform for UC owned images. Goals include:

 

l Assess ability of vendor to process METS records; may also explore option of exporting in METS.

l Evaluate technical issues related to UC/CDL hosting of Insight, including options for distributed architecture across campus.

l Assess workflow issues.

l Assess content management capabilities.

l Evaluate searching capabilities across collections, including both UC-owned images and images licensed from other sources.

l Evaluate personal collections feature.

l Conduct assessment of UC faculty and graduate students about using images in instruction and learning, and Insight’s ability to meet their needs.

II. Projects and programs

 

A. New Projects

 

Digital image services, with tools designed for classroom instruction.

 

Federated searching or portal tools for the discovery and integration of disparate collections.

 

Instructional technologies that integrate digital materials into learning and course management systems.

 

Delivery of digital books to classrooms, labs, libraries, and individual readers.

 

B. New Programs

 

Digital Preservation Program: The CDL hosts the UC libraries' digital preservation program to ensure long-term availability and access to digital content. http://www.cdlib.org/programs/digital_preservation.html.

 

See a complete list of CDL programs with program descriptions at http://www.cdlib.org/programs/index.html.

 

III. Specific Digital Library Challenges

 

A selective list of CDL’s grant-supported initiatives represents some of the challenges that we believe deserve extraordinary attention. The list, available at http://www.cdlib.org/partners/index.html, includes:

 

Integrating digital collections into teaching and learning: The CDL is a collaborator in a study by Dr. Diane Harley, Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley, to investigate the use of unrestricted digital collections in undergraduate teaching. $200,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. August 2003-July 2005.

 

The CDL has launched a study which attempts to extend the National Science Digital Library's value and encourage its use in teaching and research by integrating it into the much more extensive scientific collections that are managed by the 10 campus-based research libraries of the University of California, and presenting it by those libraries in ways that are particularly meaningful to their local patrons. Supported by a $424,000 NSF grant. October 2003- September 2005.

 

Preservation of digital materials: Investigation of the technical alternatives for harvesting, organizing, and preserving web-based government information. $150,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. October 2002-September 2003.

 

A second project will create a pilot digital preservation repository for multi-institutional use, based on the OAIS model for digital preservation. $374,736 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. November 2001 (ongoing).

 

Management of mixed print and digital collections: UC’s Systemwide Library Planning is exploring how scholars and libraries can best integrate and preserve collections of scholarly journals that are published in both print and digital forms. $670,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. January 2001-September 2003.

 

Best practices for digitizing cultural heritage materials and finding aids: Supports the creation of and permanent access to standardized metadata and digital images through the OAC. $488,148 awarded in three grants from the California State Library's Library Services Technology Act (LSTA). August 2001-September 2003.

 

Alternative forms of scholarly communication: Supports experimentation in the dissemination of research findings. $167,836 grant from the Scholarly Publishing Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). April 2000-December 2003.

 

IV. Digital library publications, policies, working papers, and other documents

Several dozen reports and published articles are available at http://www.cdlib.org/news/index.html.