Founded in October 1997 by President Richard C. Atkinson, and led by University Librarian Richard E. Lucier, the California Digital Library (CDL) has established itself as the digital "co-library" of the University of California. Organizationally housed at the UC Office of the President, the CDL operates in close collaboration with all UC campuses and many of its management and operations staff is campus-located. Several advisory and consultative groups, including the Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee, the Shared Collections Steering Committee, working groups for Technology, Tools and Services, Education, and Strategic Innovations have been established to set directions and priorities.

The CDL officially opened its 'digital doors' on January 20, 1999 at www.cdlib.org. New releases of the CDL with significant enhancements are made every six months (January and July) and new content is added on a continuous basis.

I. Collections, Services, and Systems

System-Wide Access to Scholarly Journals
The full content of nearly 5,000 scholarly journals is now available through system-wide licenses negotiated by the CDL, in cooperation with the campuses. Licenses include extremely favorable discounts and provisions for perpetual access to content. In the first two years, we have made access available which would have cost the University more than $4 million in additional funds if the campuses had tried to provide the same level of access separately.

New Digital Full Content
Recent acquisitions of digital full content include Digital Dissertations, Contemporary Women's Issues, the Grove Dictionary of Art, the Associated Press' Photo Archive, and electronic journals from publishers such as Kluwer, Plenum Press, Human Sciences Press, Wiley InterScience, and the Institute of Physics.

New Journal Citation and Abstracting Services
Recent acquisitions of journal citation and abstracting services include IEEE Xplore, the Bibliography of the History of Art, Index to19th Century American Art Periodicals, ABC/CLIO's America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts, Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO), Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW), ITER: Gateway to the Renaissance and the 19 million citations in Chemical Abstracts and CAS REACT via SciFinder Scholar.

Reference Linking at CDL
Most of the CDL electronic journals are now linked to CDL-hosted abstract and index databases. For example, when a user searches Medline and retrieves a citation to a journal for which the CDL has access, the user is able to retrieve the full-content of the journal immediately.

Melvyl(r) Union Catalog
The Melvyl(r) Union Catalog has grown to over 9.5 million unique titles representing the print holdings of UC libraries as well as those of the California State Library in Sacramento, the California Academy of Sciences and the California Historical Society, the Center for Research Libraries, and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. The Melvyl Catalog is available to the public. See http://www.dbs.cdlib.org/?CSdb=cat.

California Periodical Database
With funding from the California State Library, the California Periodicals Database was created containing citations for periodicals, newspapers, annuals, and other ongoing publications owned by most California libraries. Merging several different previous databases into one searchable resource with 863,000 unique titles, it represents holdings from over 555 locations, including 111 academic libraries, 256 public libraries, 99 legal libraries, 181 medical libraries, and 83 other special or corporate libraries. The California Serials Database is available to the public. See http://www.dbs.cdlib.org/?CSdb=pe.

Online Archive of California
Special collections and archives of the UC campuses and their California-based partners, including some California State University campuses, museums such as the Getty, and private schools such as the University of the Pacific and Stanford University, are being made available to the public through the Online Archive of California. Access to full metadata describing these collections and their tens of millions of items is now available; many of the items themselves are currently being digitized with UC and external grant funding. The CDL has recently been awarded $1.5 million in federal funds to digitize items for a Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive and to extend the OAC to several museums in California. See http://www.oac.cdlib.org/.

User-Initiated ILL Requests
Automatic user-initiated requests for materials located on other campuses, has been established to support the efficient sharing of print collections across all of the UC campuses. Any faculty member, staff member or graduate student is able to request a book or article directly from any UC campus through a simple click of a Request button, while viewing search results in CDL-hosted databases.

Access to Digitized Books from the UC Press
The CDL began linking digital versions of many UC Press books to the Melvyl catalog in January 2000. When a user retrieves the title of the book, they then can access the full content of the book. These books are currently available to the public.

Searchlight
The CDL web site is designed to provide easy access to these and other digital resources. New tools are regularly created for browsing and searching online, including Searchlight, which allows the user to search multiple databases at the same time. A special version of Searchlight is customized for public use, focused on important digital content to which non-UC users have access. See http://searchlight.cdlib.org/cgi-bin/searchlight.

Shared Cataloging Agency
The CDL has created a Shared Cataloging Agency. Traditionally, all UC campuses have catalogued library materials separately. Digital materials will be catalogued only once by this agency, and the cataloging records will be distributed to all campuses, thus saving significant duplication of effort among the campuses.

California Counts
Development has begun for a California Counts which will provide "one stop shopping" to a wide variety of data about California. The goal is to provide a single, easy-to-use, WWW interface through which users can easily find, combine, and use data about population, health, crime, income, education, and other topics. The California Data Profile will be available to the public.

II. Projects and Programs

CDL/Library of California Environmental Information Resources Project
A successful experiment supported by the California State Library resulted in the California Digital Library/Library of California Environmental Information Resources project, which built and licensed information resources for use across several sectors including universities, schools, and public libraries in California. Based upon that success the CDL has become a formal ongoing partner with the State Library to contribute to the multi-sector Library of California effort.

InterLib
The CDL is a participant in a suite of research grant proposals funded by the second phase of the National Science Foundation's Digital Library Initiative. The overall theme for these proposals is the creation of InterLib, an internet-based library, through the development of innovative computer-based tools by computer science researchers that would be tested and eventually deployed as part of the California Digital Library. Partners include computer science researchers at the Berkeley, Santa Barbara and Stanford, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. The first product of this partnership is UC-wide access to Santa Barbara's Alexandria Digital Library of geospatial information.

International Consortium of Library Consortia (ICOLC)
The CDL is an active participant in the International Consortium of Library Consortia (ICOLC). This is a group of nearly 100 library consortia. The focus is on the development of license agreements, which are advantageous, fair, and affordable to the library and user communities. ICOLC has had a significant impact on vendor practices and prices over the past year.

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© 2000 Council on Library and Information Resources

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