Notes from CDL Users Council Meeting
March 12, 2001
Oakland, CA

Attendees
*  = member’s first meeting.
Wally Babcock, UCR; Lorelei Tanji, UCI; Bob Heyer-Gray, UCD; Bette Anton, UCB; Julia Kochi, UCSF; Gabriella Gray, UCLA; Lawrence Curry, CAS; Linda Weir, Hastings; Brad Westbrook, LAUC*;  James Church, UCSD*; Abby Bridge, CHS* (for Tanya Hollis); Carol Gibbens, UCSB; Carol Backhus, LBL; Hilary Burton, LLNL; Colleen Carlton, SRLF*; Frank Gravier, UCSC; Ira Bray, CSL; Bruce Harley, CSU*
CDL staff: Cristina Campbell, Robin Chandler, Patricia Cruse, Jayne Dickson, Laine Farley, Ann Jensen, John Kupersmith, Rosalie Lack, John Ober, Steve Toub.

Users Council housekeeping

Activities of Users Council members on their campuses during the past year included:
•	password distribution
•	password policy interpretation (who gets what and why)
•	communication about system/interface difficulties (deciding what should be reported to whom when things don't work right)
•	open meeting with the Tools and Services Working Group dealing with SearchLight, MyLibrary

Several Action items from last year's meeting have been completed:
•	creating a standardized method for indicating access restrictions to be used in CDLInfo, etc.
•	highlighting action items in emails to UC representatives
•	creating summaries of CDL Feedback messages (linked under each year’s evaluation activities):  < http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/education/evaluation/ >
•	enhancing Users Council web page with additional links:
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/system_services/users_council/ >.

One item still in progress is a CDL System Status page.  Such a page is only worth doing if we also establish an ongoing a process to maintain the content.  It could link to existing vendor status pages, and might include an archive of CDL Alerts.   The "What's New" section of the CDL-hosted database welcome page < http://www.dbs.cdlib.org > already includes many, although not all, of these items.  

•	Action CDL: Continue work on the System Status page; provide links to vendors’ status pages.

CDL has decided not to implement auto-replies to feedback messages, since these would be low in content and users would likely perceive them as unnecessary e-mail.  J.Kupersmith suggested that CDL staff should be trying to send at least a preliminary response within a day or so, if the feedback requires a response.  If you have send a feedback message and haven't received any reply, the best plan of action would be to call the CDL Helpline (510.987.0555).

Campus web pages listing CDL contacts (Users Council member, Resource Liaisons, etc.) have been implemented by UC Riverside < http://library.ucr.edu/directories/cdll.shtml > and several other campuses.  

•	Action USERS COUNCIL: Those who have such a page, please send the URL to < john.kupersmith@ucop.edu > for linking from the Users Council page.

Gabriella Gray reported that fellow UCLA staff members want a page listing all electronic resources (including Tier 2) licensed for that campus.  One option is to search the Directory, entering < * > as the keyword, and limiting by campus, but this often does not include all Tier 2 resources. 
 
•	Action CDL: Investigate what CDL can do to facilitate creation of such pages.

Recap of Users Council organization: members are appointed by their UL’s and serve for 3 years.  The Charge refers to a chair elected by the members.   Most seemed to feel this is not necessary since the Council only meets once a year, and there were no calls for electing a chair.  CDL is happy to have its staff liaison continue acting in this capacity.

CDL Organizational Changes
John Ober, Director of Education and Strategic Innovation

John reviewed several aspects of CDL’s organization.

Local (internal operations) 
CDL functions as an academic-style unit within UC Office of the President.  Beverlee French is acting as the interim UL.  A high-level search committee has been appointed to handle this recruitment.  Several internal staff groups are being reorganized or redefined:  CDL Technologies (formerly part of IR&C, now part of CDL);  the Content group (formerly Database Development); the Access group (formerly Online Development) and a new Architecture & Infrastructure unit.

Extended and Co-Library relationships
From the start, CDL has operated as a "co-library."  To carry out this role, we make extensive use of advisory and implementation groups.  The co-library includes partnerships with other information providers throughout California, nationwide (Digital Library Federation level) and financial aspects (co-investments from the campuses for collections).  CDL’s UL also serves as head of UC Systemwide Library Planning.

Project structures
A number of major CDL projects--e.g., the MELVYL Catalog, A&I Transition, and OAC--have their own steering or advisory committees.

Items from Q/A session  
CDL does not have a formal liaison for faculty developing web-based courses, though we are working with faculty groups in many projects, notably eScholarship.

CDL has ongoing funding support as part of UC’s budget, along with a number of grant sources.

For more information see:
< http://www.cdlib.org/about/planning/ >

MELVYL Catalog Transition
Laine Farley, Director of Digital Library Services

In January 2000, a committee was formed to develop the RFP.  Vendors could bid on any or all of three components  (the union catalog component, the A&I databases, and the user interface).  Activities conducted as part of this process included campus visits, meetings with faculty and staff, and an online survey.

The RFP was issued in June; responses were received in August, and evaluated during the Fall of 2000.  Both Users Council member Julia Kochi (UCSF) and Ann Jensen (UCB) were part of that group.  Visits were made to the potential venders and their customers.  It was decided to award bids only for the union catalog and its interface.

The decision was made in December. An “apparently successful bidder” has been selected and UC campuses have been notified.  Currently, we are in the final stages  of contract negotiation.  We expect to see a prototype in Fall of this year with a production version in Spring 2002.

All core functions that are available currently will be available in the new system.  In addition, there will be significant new functions, including a more efficient way to do our already complicated record merging; phrase searching; relevance ranking; and sorting of results.

Cris Campbell is the project manager for implementation; Ann Jensen will devote 40% time to heading the Services Team (dealing with service-related functions and the user interface).  Ellen Meltzer will lead the Education/Usability team (a closely related group that will deal with usability testing, publicity, and user education issues).   Karen Coyle will head the Database and Technology team.  Each team will have CDL staff with some campus input.  Users Council members will be involved in this process.

Items from Q/A session
There will be “beta testing” of the prototype system once it is developed.

This testing will be directed by the Education/Usability team and we expect that Users Council members will be involved on their campuses.

The old system is not scheduled to be shut down until the end of 2002 with several months of running parallel. There will be no new development during this time.  However, anything that breaks, we will fix.

The system we are likely to buy comes with an "out of the box" user interface.  Also, we are looking at several customer sites, each with its own variations on the interface.  Once a contract is signed and the vendor can be announced publicly, we will put up a web page with links to the company’s site and some of the customer sites. The implementation team will address a range of issues, e.g., how much the new system should resemble the existing Melvyl Catalog, and what its name should be.  J.Kupersmith welcomes your opinions on such matters.  

Considerable groundwork has already been done on indexing.  We intend to make use of the CAT/PE project document (1998) which reflects extensive work on what new indexes should be considered in a redesign of the system.  	

We also do not expect to make change in input sources during this time.  We will be evaluating record standards, standards for holdings, etc.  We will use SOPAG as our policy advisory committee for major issues of this kind.

For more information see:
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/technology/projects/unioncat/ > which describes the background and the process to develop the RFP.  A new web site will be created to give information on the transition/ implementation process.

Abstracting & Indexing (A&I) Databases Transition
Laine Farley, Director of Digital Library Services

Locally mounted databases are less than 25% of CDL’s total collection of databases.  After extensive review and signoff from the UL’s, we are planning to transition these from access through the CDL interfaces to access through a limited number of vendors’ or aggregators’ sites.  Where possible, we will use one source for multiple databases.  MEDLINE and GeoRef are being fast-tracked because of issues specific to the current providers.

Items from Q/A session
We will offer only one of the currently available versions of  ERIC (same for other multi-source databases).

A partial solution to the single interface problem may be a commercial multi-database product or a further development of SearchLight.

After July, the Education/Usability team will deal with getting the word out to campuses.  We expect Users Council will play a part in this process.

After this transition, the CDL passwords will no longer work.  Proxy server access, already offered on all campuses, will continue to become more important.  UC is also moving toward a system of authentication through certificates.  Mary Heath is developing a statement for vendors on our preferred methods for user authentication; CDL will require that vendors work with us to develop and implement these methods.

We will encourage vendors to offer an Update function, though most of them do not currently do so.  We are also currently looking at features such as Request, links to content and links to holdings.

For more information see:
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/a-i-trans/ >
Laine’s PowerPoint presentation:
< (http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/a-i-trans/AandI_presentation.ppt >

CDL Web Site Development
Steve Toub, Web Design Manager

CDL is increasing its emphasis on user-centered design.  With major changes coming in the MELVYL Catalog and A&I database access, we’re thinking ahead to how these will tie together.  Ideas from the campuses would be appreciated.  

•	Action USERS COUNCIL: Send interface suggestions for the Melvyl Catalog or the A&I databases to CDL Feedback < cdl@www.cdlib.org >.  Send interface suggestions for the Directory directly to 
< steve.toub@ucop.edu >.

Most of the recent work on the Directory has focused on the “back end”.  The Task Force on Access Integration, created by SOPAG, is working toward an integrated, holistic solution to system-wide access to electronic resources.  Their recommendations could affect the role of the Directory, how it should appear to users, and how it should relate to individual campus directories of electronic resources. Their white paper should be out some time toward the end of summer.  At present, the subject vocabulary used in the Directory has been frozen (a decision of the Web Design Advisory Group). While we will continue to maintain the data, we will not do any active development on the Directory interface until the Task Force provides guidance.

We are also working on the CDL Management Interface, an improved method for adding local campus resources to the Directory as well as a way to generate Directory records by extracting data from the MARC records produced by Shared Cataloging (the process will include checking by a human). Both of these projects will help streamline data entry.

Items from Q/A session
CDL will develop the policies on how to add to the Directory before the Web management interface is in operation.  SOPAG has been asked to name library staff who can add to the Directory.  We are in the process of streamlining the data entry by transmitting the MARC records provided by the Shared Cataloging group.  

Comments on the “Information for Library Staff” (Libstaff) area:
•	Hard to find what you’re looking for.
•	Lots of false drops with the search engine.
•	Should be organized by function and not by department.  But there should also be a way to access content by department name. 
•	Include a subject-oriented, A-Z list.
•	Too many document formats, perhaps use only PDF and HTML.  (Laine pointed out that some documents are in RTF so that people on the campuses and edit or adapt them for campus use).

Counting California
< http://countingcalifornia.cdlib.org >
Patricia Cruse, Manager, Government Information Initiative

Counting California is information, facts and data about the Golden State.  It provides an integrated approach, with one-stop shopping for data from government agencies (both federal and state).  Right now, we are in the prototype phase and hope to go into production in July.  Several campus people are working on the project.  Counting California expands the user group beyond UC to include all citizens of California.

There are four different ways to search: topic, geography, title, and provider.  Presently, information is provided down to the city level.  The project team is hoping to include additional geographic levels in the July release.  Sections include: Monthly polls with links to the various datasets, news (new files added to the database are highlighted here), help, and feedback.

The database currently includes 10 different datasets representing 6 different agencies.  The datasets were originally issued by the agencies in a variety of formats: CD-ROM, spreadsheets, html tables, etc.

Further development of the prototype will be influenced by results of a recently conducted usability study in which a panel of reviewers used “heuristic analysis”.

Trisha wants feedback on Counting California.

•	Action USERS COUNCIL: If you have suggestions, comments, or feedback on Counting California’s functionality, user interface, or contents please  send to 
< patricia.cruse@ucop.edu >

Items from Q/A session
Counting California is funded by the Library of California and an LSTA grant.

People cannot yet import CC data into their own spreadsheets; this functionality may be in place by July.

We do include some historical data (the Population of Cities and Counties from 1850 to 1890 ) and may add more.

For more information see:
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/jan2001/#counting >

Online Archive of California
Robin Chandler, Project Manager

OAC now includes over 5,200 finding aids or approximately 110,000 pages of encoded pages, and approximately 50,000 digital images such as UCB’s California Heritage (Honeyman) Collection, UC Davis’ Eastman Collection, and UCLA’s Ishigo Collection.  The 40 institutions participating include a range of libraries, archives and museums, the Federal government, California state government, University of California, California State Universities, historical societies and private institutions.

OAC’s public services goals are:
•	Expanding functional capabilities of the OAC interface, tools and services
•	Identifying external audiences and primary source materials to meet their needs
•	Refining and expanding linkages between OAC collections and additional CDL content
The January 2001 release includes Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA); Museums and the Online Archive of California (MOAC), a cooperative project to improve access to museum collections using Encoded Archival Description (EAD); and California Cultures, a virtual collection that will document ethnic communities in California.

Robin hopes that the Users Council can work with OAC by:
•	Providing feedback and facilitating communication including focus groups
•	Advising on interface development, tools & services
•	Content selection for digitization 
•	Scholarship to enhance/facilitate use and understanding of primary resources 

Items from Q/A session
The next OAC software platform will have faster response time than the current Dynaweb software.

Currently there are no additional projects in the OAC development queue; Robin would welcome suggestions.

Copyright issues, such as might be encountered when digitizing course materials, need to be worked out at the repository level before the material goes online.

For more information see:
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/jan2001/#oac >
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/oac/ >

eScholarship
< http://escholarship.cdlib.org >
John Kupersmith for Roy Tennant, Manager, eScholarship Web and Services Design

eScholarship comes under the heading of Scholarly Communication Initiatives, in which CDL collaborates with scholarly communities to develop alternative publishing venues.  In January, we released the following new eScholarship services or enhancements: 

Prototype ePrint Repositories
for selected scholarly communities.  Repositories typically contain working papers that may be on their way to journal or monograph publication. Repositories for California International and Area Studies, Dermatology, and Tobacco Control are now available. All link in some fashion to other eScholarship activities, such as journal and monograph publication. See them all from < http://eprints.cdlib.org  >. These repositories are also compliant with the Open Archives initiative, which is providing a means by which disparate archives can be queried using the same protocol (see < http://www.openarchives.org > for more information).

 XML-based Monograph 
In a joint project with UC Press, we are publishing monographs in XML on the web, one of the first times this has been done.  XML separates content from formatting, so that a user could easily call up a version of a document in a different style (e.g., large type), with the HTML page being created on-the-fly.  Presently we have one item in XML -- the digital version of "Tobacco War: Inside the California Battles", by Stanton A. Glantz and Edith D. Balbach.  It will be joined by dozens of other UC Press titles over the coming months. References in the "Tobacco War" volume link to many of the source documents available at the UCSF Tobacco Control Archive.

Items from Q/A session
There are catalog records for the published monographs in eScholarship, but not for the pre-publication items in the ePrint repositories.

SearchLight does not include eScholarship content.

For more information see:
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/jan2001/#escholarship >

SearchLight
< http://searchlight.cdlib.org/cgi-bin/searchlight>
Laine Farley, for Sherry Willhite, Information Resources Analyst

SearchLight is a take-off of UCSD's Portal project.  It has had a difficult birthing process and has some ongoing problems with reliability.  Our goals are to make the system more stable and to build management tools that will let staff make changes without intervention by programmers.  We have talked with commercial vendors who offer the same type of functionality plus additional features (Gale Total Access, Web Feat, Ex Libris MetaLib) to see if they could replace SearchLight, and we will continue to monitor their development.

SearchLight's use is growing rapidly, and we’re not entirely sure why.  Students may simply be finding it and deciding to try it; some may see the link or button and think they have to use it.  

•	Action CDL: Review the way in which links to SearchLight appear on CDL’s web pages, to make sure the presentation is appropriate and not misleading.

Due to problems with statistics, we don't have a campus-by-campus breakdown.  We suspect that the recent rash of 500 Internal Server errors may have been related to increased SearchLight usage.  This problem has been fixed.  Bob Heyer-Gray mentioned that the Earthquake Engineering Abstracts system is "getting hammered" by SearchLight usage.

The Tools and Services Working Group had conducted some campus visits concerning SearchLight and found  that it is a better tool for undergraduates, although most librarians don't feel comfortable teaching it because of the lack of limit capability.  

MyLibrary@CDL
< http://mylibrary.cdlib.org/ >
John Kupersmith, Project Manager

MyLibrary@CDL is no longer being actively developed.  At the present time, there are over 200 user profiles set up.  The prototype is up and running and will stay up unless problems arise.

In Fall 2000, CDL and library staff conducted focus groups on several campuses.  Participants liked the idea of a "customizable" interface, but this enthusiasm was tied largely to features not found in the prototype.  Users wanted a merge with the web presence, circulation functions, etc. of their campus library.  People wanted more information that was specific to their campus and their disciplines.  This would require a campus administrator interface and the need to have someone at each campus operate and update this.  Users also wanted more discipline choices.

Focus groups and library staff discussions also revealed a marketing issue:  if CDL opens up a portal, does that compete with campus library portals.  If so, are we working at cross-purposes?

Laine Farley mentioned serving on the Public Electronic Access Systems task force UCB (chaired by Ellen Meltzer) which determined principles for that library’s web presence.  It was decided that the UCB web sites should have a strong campus identity.  Our Web Design Advisory Group will be working on making our web sites work best with the campuses.

For more information, see
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/system_services/projects/mylibrary/ >

CDL Evaluation/Usability activities
Rosalie Lack, Evaluation and Instruction Analyst

Starting with MyLibrary@CDL, formal usability testing was done during the actual design process.
Methods used include:

•	Focus groups – structured discussions with 8-15 participants.
•	Structured evaluation -- review by a panel of evaluators using “heuristics” (principles).
•	User observations – individuals are observed as they work through tasks and “think aloud”.
•	Surveys/Questionnaires – online or paper.
•	Usage statistics.
•	User feedback.

All these evaluation techniques will be used as we work through the upcoming big changes (MELVYL transition, A&I Transition).  

Items from Q/A session
Rosalie's annual statistical profile document will be out in April.  The October 2000 summary of user feedback messages will be available soon.

Some UC campuses are also doing usability testing:
•	UCSD conducted 6 months of testing on Portal/Sage.  No focus groups, more structured evaluation.  The hardest thing was finding volunteers, especially faculty volunteers.
•	UCR tested pre-publicity and post-publicity awareness of their web site.  They also did focus groups, but found it hard to find volunteers.
•	UCSB conducted focus groups for their library system RFP.
•	UCSF organized focus groups that covered their GALEN II web site, MyLibrary@CDL, and use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDA’s) such as the Palm Pilot.
•	UCD evaluated their DRA Web OPAC using a mix of user observations and focus groups. 

For more information see:
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/education/evaluation/ >

Users Council communication and future plans

Several Users Council members pointed out the need for timely communication about major developments, especially those requiring action.   

•	Action CDL: Keep Users Council informed of major developments.  Give as much lead time as possible when Council members will be asked to take specific action.

Council members were reminded that they may be asked to help with evaluation and communication as the MELVYL and A&I transitions proceed.  They can perform a valuable service by filtering, and re-framing for their campuses, the information they receive from CDL.

One question concerned the list of Resource Liaisons.  This is linked from the Users Council web page
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/system_services/users_council/ >.

Consensus of those present seemed to be that the next Users Council meeting should be held in Oakland.  Several people had already left by this time, however, so please feel free to send your opinion to J.Kupersmith.

One meeting per year seems to be working.  There was some discussion of holding this meeting closer to the July release date, perhaps in May.  

•	Action CDL: Look into possible dates for 2002 meeting.