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Campus Instances of UC-eLinks Update

September 25, 2003 Author: CDLCategories:

The CDL is happy to announce that the majority of the campus instances of UC-eLinks are in production (UCR should be ready to go live in the next few weeks.)  The campus instances are managed by the UC-eLinks Liaisons on each campus <http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/uc-elinks/roster.html>

What is the benefit for patrons?
Patrons will now be able to seamlessly access both CDL and campus-licensed journal titles.  Depending on the campus, this will mean an additional 200 to 1,500 electronic journal titles.  Previously, patrons were only able to access CDL-licensed resources via UC-eLinks.

The extension of UC-eLinks to support campus-based resources that integrate with systemwide resources originated with and was endorsed by SOPAG.  CDL negotiated the license for adding campus versions and worked with Ex Libris, the product vendor, on the technical enhancements to present combined services to users.  The CDL will be hosting the SFX servers for most of the campuses.

How are the lists of titles for the CDL and campus versions of UC-eLinks maintained?

  1. Ex Libris discovers the new titles and title changes in a variety of ways, such as through periodic tape loads from full text producers, data feed from the ISSN registry, the CONSER database (the set of serial records input/created or otherwise introduced to the OCLC database authenticated by CONSER members), and from user feedback.
  2. Every month, Ex Libris sends Margery Tibbetts, the CDL UC-eLinks Project Manager, a KnowledgeBase (KB) Update, which includes software updates and database updates.  (The KnowledgeBase is the behind-the-scenes database of journal titles and databases used for University of California linking.)
  3. The KB Update is applied by CDL to all of the campus instances or versions generally during the second week of the month.  The update process adds new portfolios (journal titles), new targets (full text vendors) and new sources (database vendors), but does not activate them.  The update process also deletes titles and modifies coverage information.
  4. For aggregator databases in which we license all of the titles, such as Expanded Academic ASAP, ABI/INFORM Global and Literature Online (LION), CDL has instructed the update process to automatically activate any new titles.
  5. CDL activates/deactivates portfolios when we receive the information from the UCSD Shared Cataloging Program. The SCP stream is also used to update the Directory of CDL-licensed Content.  If a new provider is added, CDL generally does not wait for SCP, but instead uses the title list from the vendor to activate the new target and list of titles, after the coverage is verified at UCSD. CDL also makes changes to the database based on feedback from the campus librarians and end users.
  6. At the campus level, the UC-eLinks liaisons activate/deactivate portfolios in their own campus instances. They do this for the titles licensed by the campus that are not part of a 10-campus agreement.  Each campus may have a different workflow from acquisitions/cataloging to UC-eLinks.
  7. Occasionally the UC-eLinks liaisons and CDL staff have to wait to activate a title until Ex Libris has added it to the global database (KnowledgeBase).  CDL cannot add titles to the global database; however, if a title is already in the database, CDL can add it to a target where it previously did not exist.  For example, if the journal title Pediatrics was activated in HighWire Press but was also available (and perhaps sooner) via Expanded Academic ASAP, CDL can add and activate the title in the Expanded Academic ASAP target.
  8. The original data load for UC-eLinks came from the Melvyl Catalog links database, which had a loose relationship with SCP.  UC-eLinks and SCP are not synchronized at the moment.  The CDL is in the process of updating all of the targets (except the aggregators) in the CDL instance of UC-eLinks, using title lists provided by SCP staff.