Users Council Annual Meeting
Monday, April 28, 2003
9:30 AM – 3:30 PM
Ginn house, Preservation Park, Oakland

Attending: Brenda Baldwin, CHS; Ira Bray, CSL; Robin Chandler, CDL; Heather Christenson, CDL; Patricia Cruse, CDL; Jayne Dickson, CDL; Dennis Elcheson, LLL; Laine Farley, CDL; Susan Flanagan, Getty; Gabriella Gray, UCLA; Daniel Greenstein, CDL; Dennis Hagen, CSL; Bob Heyer-Gray, UCD; Ann Jensen, UCB; Kathy Kerns, Stanford; Julia Kochi, UCSF; Lizbeth Langston, UCR; Lorna Lueck, UCSB; Annie Malley, CAS; Ellen Meltzer, CDL; Ginny Moon, NRLF; Jose Olivares, LBL; Wendy Parfrey, CDL; Suzanne Samuel, CDL; Lena Shelton, CDL; Cristina Woo, CDL; Linda Weir, Hastings; Christina Woo, UCI; Richard Woods, CSU; Marlo Young, UCSD.

New Users Council members: Donald Barclay, UCM; Ann Jensen, UCB; Kathy Kerns, Stanford; Lorna Lueck, UCSB; Marlo Young, UCSD.

Welcome & new directions for CDL (CDL University Librarian Daniel Greenstein)
1.	CDL has had a shift in service orientation – is the CDL an end-user service or a service to the library?  We are now leaning toward service to libraries: invested in common utilities or services that we all need but no one can afford to do individually.  We want to enhance and enable local library services: Melvyl (23 million volumes in system currently), Request, SFX (UC-eLinks), SearchLight2, preservation program/capacity (3 strands to this program: digital content from willing depositors, negotiated deposit, and government [and other] web-based content).  We take a proactive approach to integrate digital library content.  Layered-service orientation.  We’ll be unbundling the web site so that you can present the services directly to your end-users.   

2.	We need sometimes to work around consensus in order to act nimbly.  Example: Image service.  200,000 images (UC collection) unavailable because there is no consensus on a way to present these (image delivery).  We need to undertake trial by experimentation.   This is now available while we’re locked in battle over delivery and encoding standards.   Requires a level of trust; this layered service model only works if you trust the service level below you and you trust your level of services. 

3.	Need to be more aggressive in our collection negotiating.  If we threaten to pull out of a deal, we’ve got to be willing to do this with publishers.  This will require a level of discussion that isn’t currently in place.  Shared print collection discussion…SOPAG is beginning to look at this.  CDL will be exploring the shared print service environment.  What infrastructure needs to be in place for a shared environment?

4.	Campus involvement.  If the pendulum is swinging toward campus services, we need your input in these issues.

Questions?  
Is CDL moving into preservation/archiving?  Is CDL putting person hours into this or hardware?  
DG:  Preservation program funding (both internal and external) will be more of a brokering role with others who do have the hardware to do this.  We are looking to store off-site, here in the Bay Area.

Where is CDL positioning itself (bleeding edge, leading edge, etc.)?
DG:  We’re trying to push a broader range (UC libraries) of services.  We need to prioritize where we need to put our efforts.  The campus libraries need to get beyond the OPAC game.  Examples: instructional technologies, development technologies, etc.
In some areas we will be on the cutting edge.  

Shared collections and print archive…if everyone follows this model, there will be no print copies.  Will publishers strike back?
DG:  Doesn’t see this happening.  More of an issue with books.  We need to be more flexible in how we see distribution.  He’s not so worried about this.

Any view as to how the general public might use CDL services?
DG:  This is an active discussion.  As we begin to unbundle some of our services, these will be available to many others.  As we begin to enable tools to allow campus libraries to integrate our services in more meaningful ways (via campus portals), these will become more available to others.  We might use SearchLight2 to build portals to show that it can be done.  We recognize that the campuses will be very differently disposed to build on these services.  However, there will always be a “vanilla” service for campuses less able to build on these services.

Review of Users Council activities for the last year.  (Ellen Meltzer) 
See handout provided.

CDL System Changes
Melvyl-T Update (Cristina Campbell)
CDL released the catalog to the UC community on April 3 and then April 23 we released it to the general public.  We are still working on some things.  Ellen, Felicia Poe and Cristina Campbell have begun campus training.  All campuses are scheduled.

SOPAG is the advisory group for policy issues relating to Melvyl-T.  One policy decision was to include both monographs and serials from all sources; this is because of the combining of the CAT and PE databases.  The Library of California is no longer funding CULP and SERHOLD so these will no longer be included in the new system.  CULP is no longer being produced.  Library staff on all campuses plus all non-UC groups were consulted.  For example, it was decided that CSL records would be included; the work involved in loading their records is not insignificant.

LLNL, CSU, Stanford, Getty, CULP and SERHOLD are not included in the new Melvyl system.  We now provide a direct link to the catalogs of these sources (except CULP and SERHOLD).  We will be working on a SearchLight-like tool to allow for a broadcast search of available sources that were in PE but are not included in Melvyl-T.

Load testing: We have a contractual benchmark with Ex Libris for how the system will respond.  We are doing a public “live” load test May 1.  Please participate and get anyone you can to participate…we are shooting for 1,200 simultaneous users.

Citation Management Software Filter-issue.  The filters for the 3 ISI research products are listed in the Help section under “Viewing/Saving your Results, Import Citations”. 

El Mel Tells < http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/elmeltells/index.html >: Includes the latest happenings with the catalog project; be sure to check it out.

Questions?
On the load test, do you want us to test remotely as well?
CC: That would be good.  

Would there be a time you want us to test, like “Journal” or “United States”?
CC: If you think that this is how an end-user would search, go for it.  Just don’t go out of your way to try to break the catalog.

NRLF database, no direct connect, e.g., USE NRLF?
CC: It is true that there no longer is a USE system.  However, the bar code should be in the NRLF record.  They will need to use GLADIS to see the bar code information.

Laine:  If they have telnet, shouldn’t they be able to telnet directly to NRLF?  All the USE command is a telnet command.   

Ginny Moon <NRLF>: Yes, it is just a training issue; they are used to doing it with the USE command.

UC-eLinks New Services and Future (Laine Farley)
Status info: http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/uc-elinks/
UC-eLinks Project team < http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/uc-elinks/ > consists of many of the A&I Transition team plus two campus people.  Tammy Dearie, UCSD, will comment on policy issues and Karl Kocher, UCD, is a technical contact.

New services:  We are beginning adding the campus instances of UC-eLinks.  We have liaisons from each campus and training will begin soon for administration of campus-only subscriptions.  

Ask-a-Librarian:  Was turned on in the UC-eLinks pop-up window in early March.  UC Heads of Public Service (HOPS) was queried; of the campuses responding, they’ve seen a fairly large increase in their online reference service.

Feedback link:  Users are reporting problems with UC-eLinks.  This is revealing problems with other services as well.

Can others use the Ask-a-Librarian links?
LF: No, this is IP address-based so they would only see the link for their own campus.

The Tools and Services Working Group (TSWG) was charged with determining how new services would be developed/implemented.  This document is on the UC-eLinks web page mentioned above.

Is CDL providing a mechanism for determining local subscriptions?
LF: Margery Tibbetts is coordinating this.  Once she identifies duplicate package subscriptions, we may be able to share the cataloging work among the campuses involved.

Gabi Gray <UCLA> reported problems with inbound linking.
LF:  We have a list of known problems.  We are working with Gale to correct a lot of the inbound linking problems.

SearchLight2 (Laine Farley)
There are several things we’d like to do with SearchLight2, such as providing a broadcast search of the catalogs that are no longer part of Melvyl-T.  We’d also like to create a SearchLight-type project that works for undergraduates (panic button—few but with text); also as a Subject Portal. 

Do we need a Database Advisor or a Portal?  At CDL, we’ve decided that we need both.

These features are important: flexibility for customization; more search options [Author, Title, Keyword]; ability to retrieve results and manipulate, save targets; integrate with citation management software or instructional software.

CDL commissioned a market survey on the major products available.  The “state of the art” is not perfect.  We are evaluating all of this and hope to produce a prototype with one of the vendors.  

We are very interested in hearing about your thoughts and needs for this type of service.  

Citation Management Software (Laine Farley)
CDL was surprised by the amount of “connect” file complaints we received when we retired the CDL-hosted databases.  CDL has sent sample connect files to Users Council to pass to the campus staff.  

CDL is working with Ovid to correct the Keyword searching via the “connect” file.  

Off-campus access is only available via VPN or Z39.50 proxy.  

CDL has been asked to pursue a UC-wide site-license for RefWorks.  We’ve recently met with the providers of this product and have scheduled a trial.

There is a document on the CDL Web site, entitled Changes in Support for Citation Management Software and Z39.50 Clients for CDL Hosted Databases
< http://www.cdlib.org/news/z3950.html > that discusses the situation of the formerly CDL-hosted databases and citation management software.  A second page, EndNote Connection Files for UC Users 
< http://www.cdlib.org/guides/ucbibusers/index.html> contains a Word document with that contains information about using EndNote connection files with CSA databases, instructions for modifying the CSA connection files for your campus, and some notes on how keyword searching in Ovid databases (via Z39.50) differs from Ovid's web interface and two special EndNote connection files (Windows and Macintosh versions) to share with users, one for PsycINFO via CSA and one for BIOSIS Previews via Ovid.

We are still dealing with most of the major vendors.  We have a meeting soon with Ovid and ProQuest to discuss outstanding issues.

CDL Libstaff Web Site (Felicia Poe)
Redesign of the CDL home page and the CDL Libstaff web sites are now taking place.  Libstaff has grown organically over the years and is in desperate need of a redesign.  As part of the redesign process, we began with an assessment phase in February 2003.  We interviewed stakeholders and surveyed campus library staff.  We got 80 responses to this initial survey and re-categorized and renamed the major categories.  Libstaff survey # 2 targeted eight primary tasks.

Tomorrow, CDL will be on the UCB campus for usability testing (5 live participants) on the site.  Later on down the line, another survey will be distributed.

Questions?
What is your timeline?
FP: By Sept 1, 2003, we hope to have both the CDL home page and libstaff web sites available.

Collections/Licensing (Wendy Parfrey)
Acquisitions CDL licensed since January.  This is a culmination of a year’s work, usually.  See handout.

Was anything discontinued to get these?  Or added on?
WP: These were added on to the existing collections.

Process:  CDL surveys the subject selectors and then takes their four or five priorities.  We then create a work plan.  Our marching orders are to work from the work plan.

When unsolicited offers arise, we check with campus staff about these.  Wendy pulls these offers along with the priorities from the campuses into an analysis.  Today, we are having our April meeting with the Joint Steering Committee (JSC); these occur monthly.

Once we get the best offer for a resource, we present this to the campuses because there is often a cost-sharing basis for the campuses.  

How are decisions for the humanities made?  
WP: For humanities, we solicit feedback from a larger range of bibliographer groups.

Currently, the JSC representatives are: Lorlelei Tanji (UCI), Lucia Snowhill (UCSB), Cindy Shelton (UCLA), Camille Wanat (UCB and Bev French (CDL).

This afternoon the JSC will be making decisions about APA’s PsycArticles (full text); RISM [music database] from NISC; upgrading Wilson’s Art index to Art Full Text, Education Full Text [includes 85 journals not in ERIC]; London Times digital archive (200 years of the London Times).

Resource Liaisons (Heather Christenson)
The CDL Resource Liaisons Program is incredibly important for keeping abreast of the problems/issues of the licensed resources.  Aspects of the resource, which Resource Liaisons monitor, include access, content, interface issues, and the educational component.  RLs also review the statistics for their resource, should understand the contract for their resource, and take questions from colleagues and end-users.  

RLs also pay a key role in the world of negotiating contracts.  They provide important feedback that is used to evaluate each resource come renewal time.  RLs are appointed through a process: nominations from librarians and bibliographer groups.  These nominations are then sent to the JSC for approval.  They are nominated for a two-year term.  

Heather will be visiting the various campuses and their Resource Liaisons in an effort to improve communications.  Heather will also be revamping the RL web page with more useful information.

The annual RL meeting will be May 9, 2003 in Irvine.  Heather will work on making the RL program more visible with vendors.  She also wants to improve the two-way communication process: information from RLs to and from CDL.

Biggest issues from campus visits:  Vendors don’t realize the extent to which RLs represent UC.  Some confusion with RLs re: the reporting of statistics.

Are RLs synonymous with Database Monitors?  
HC: Database Monitors are local.

Do you have a list of Resource Liaisons?
Yes, we do: < http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/liaisons/liaisons.html >

If there is not one, do we contact you?
Yes, and we’ll get on it.

Training Issues (Ellen Meltzer)
Educational outreach.  In July 2002, CDL made campus visits to discuss the various transitions.  Educational outreach is now underway for the Melvyl-T transition.  Training documents that can be adapted for local use are available on the Adaptable outreach web page < http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/comm/outreach/ >

The Melvyl-T training materials consist of PowerPoint presentations along with hands-on demonstrations.  The online Help embedded in Melvyl-T is very useful. 
 
What about “train the trainers” handouts?
EM: Ellen suggests that you look at the user’s guide, review the issues in the “known problems FAQ” on Melvyl-T, and the technical articles in El Mel Tells 
< http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/elmeltells/index.html >.

In addition to CDLINFO and CDLAlerts, Cris mentioned El Mel Tells.  Be sure to check out this resource.  The Adaptable Outreach page is a great resource, with materials created by UC librarians. 

A third round of usability testing on the Melvyl-T interface will be conducted in fall or early 2004 after the cataloged is available for a longer period.

We know that end-users do not switch over until pulling the plug is eminent.  Are we going to do some advance advertising for Melvyl-T?
The news banners are already in place.  

Vendor training:  From time to time a vendor contacts us and offers training to the UC campuses.  Ellen forwards these offers on to Users Council.  Is this a good way to do this?  
UCR:  Yes and no.  The same offer often comes from HOPS.  
UCI:  We get a fair amount of outside training at UCI.  The results have been mixed.  Some have provided good trainers (based on academic libraries) and some bad trainers (too much focused on public libraries).  Christina Woo mentioned that she does not want banner headlines (advertisements) showing up in our licensed databases.  Does CDL have a policy on this?  Action: CDL.

Christina also mentioned that they have a number of library staff a UCI that present better training sessions than the vendor does.  Christina would like to know if other campuses would be interested in trading these training services.

Ellen reminds the group that they should forward to CDL any comments about bad trainers.  Perhaps we can straighten out the trainer before s/he proceeds around the state.

If Ellen sends offers of training to UC, what is your expectation from us?
That you pass this on to the appropriate parties at your campus.  You, personally, do not have to respond to Ellen.

Can you send these to other people (e.g., training coordinators) on the campus?
EM:  Would prefer to send these to Users Council and have you forward these to the appropriate parties.

Status of Other CDL Projects
Californiadigitallibrary.org (Lena Shelton)
This is the CDL public web site.  What is it and how did it come about?  It is a web site for the public; it consists of publicly available information that is managed by UC.  One of the issues that arose from the public is that they couldn’t tell what was available to them on the regular website: < http://www.cdlib.org/ >.  

The new website is also a way to highlight the campus projects, to make them publicly available.  We have several different types of records in the system.  We are also looking to leverage this information for the K-12 community.  We are looking for partners in this area.

One issue in the new system is subject searching: some items have the subject on the collection level and some items have it at the item level.

The database contains several different types of data – collection level and item level – OAC collections, UC Press books, photographs, etc.  It contains about 70,000 images from OAC, collections and texts, video and audio.  It contains scholarly and scientific resources.

From the Collections page, you can browse the different subjects and the collections for a particular repository.  

What kind of relevancy algorithm is used?
LS: It defaults to all items; relevancy is done by swish-e search.  

What are your plans for K-12?
LS: “Lots of bandwidth looking for content”   C-Learn has created curriculum online and we’re talking with them about using UC collections in the California curriculum.  It is our job to make these resources available.

The future of this site?  
LS: We would like to keep adding to this.  Send us an email letting us know of any UC managed resources that you know about but that are not currently included in the public site.

Digital Preservation – Brief Report (Trisha Cruse)
CDL’s idea for the digital preservation program.  Overview – the digital preservation program is funded by three sources: co-investment from the campuses, external funding, and by leveraging the staff, technology and other resources available from UC.  The CDL is working with the Stanford computer science department and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

Three aspects to the project: establishment of a UC library digital preservation repository (content created and owned by UC), participation in the LOCKSS beta test, evaluating methods for persistent management of web-based materials (see Mellon Grant information below).

Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe – dealing with ejournals, how we might preserve these.  It harvests data from web accessible sources.  

Mellon Grant for Federal Documents (Trisha Cruse)
This project is examining what it means to capture, curate, and preserve web-based information.  After you’d captured it, what do you do with it?  How do you archive it?

The first part of the project is to understand the nature of the problem and we are approaching this from a variety of standpoints.  First, we have surveyed major institutions to see what their understanding of the problem is.  We have asked them what they see are the major challenges when it comes to archiving web-based information and who is currently working on such issues.  Our next step was to survey who was actually working on projects and what were they finding.  We also are trying to gain a better understanding of the dot.gov domain – how big is it, how often does it change, what types of files are available, etc.  
CDL is also conducting a technical survey…what technology is out there for capture, curation and preservation?  The San Diego Supercomputer Center is assisting with this investigation.  

We have conducted a test-crawl of six government agency sites: 
1. U.S. Department of State and related Bureaus
2. U.S. Department of the Interior and related Bureaus
3. United States Senate
4. United States Environmental Protection Agency
5. California Energy Commission
6. California State Water Resources Control Board

The crawl began Nov. 25th and took approximately one week to complete. The crawl pulled in
every file (including images, audio, (in theory) video, etc.). Each crawler dove down to depth 10.  Stanford’s current implementation either ignored or truncated files over 2MB. They are changing this.
§ Using Stanford’s .gov seed list, they completed 4934
§ The material took about 325GB
§ This corresponds to 10,668,090 files that were captured
§ In comparison, a complete crawl of Stanford, pulling in all file types takes about 34GB”

With the current state budget crisis, we are very concerned that state data that resides on agency websites might be lost.  We are considering doing an “emergency crawl” of California State agency websites.

QUESTIONS: 
What is the relationship of this to what Brewster Kale has done?
TC: The Internet Archive provides a great service and one that we are interested in learning about.  We have met and talked to the Internet Archive a couple of times.  However, the CDL is evaluating what other types of strategies and tools are available and how do they perform in a web environment.  
Do government pages have no-crawling capabilities?
In our experience some of the government sites have robot exclusions – meaning crawlers cannot crawl the site.  A different strategy will be needed to capture the information on these sites – perhaps negotiate with the agency.  Also, about 70% of government sites are deep-web materials – meaning the materials are not available to the standard crawler.  Deep web is any content on a website that requires human input.  The CDL is working with Stanford to develop their crawler that can crawl the deep web.

Who are the two state agencies you are working with now?
The California Energy Commission and the California State Water Control Board.

One concern of the state data centers is copyright restrictions.  How are you dealing with this?
It is true that the federal government is less concerned with copyright issues than is the state government.  
Dennis Elchesen (LLNL):  Janet Coles is our current copyright contact.  Trisha will contact her.  
Action: Trisha.

An interim report of our initial findings is available at http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/gii/MellonGovInfo/

OAC Update (Robin Chandler)
The OAC has improved much since April 2002.  See handouts for details.

Questions?
Is the OAC the largest project of its kind that you are aware of?
It is the largest free initiative of its kind.  Yes, it is something to be proud of.

eScholarship Update (Suzanne Samuel)
UC Press eScholarship Editions < http://escholarship.cdlib.org/ >

The UC Press eScholarship editions now have 800 available to UC and 400 of those are available publicly.  1,500 UC Press titles were bought from NetLibrary.  By the end of the year, all 1,500 will be available.  About another 400 will be publicly available. New titles become available about every six weeks.

You can search the full text in the interface.  You can also search within the book with term highlighting and navigation.  We now have a MARC download for the publicly available titles.

Is this linked from the public CDL pages?
Yes.  These are also in the public site and are linked from Melvyl.  

Once the 1,500 titles are loaded, will others be available?
We hope so.  For example, we continue to work with UC Press in licensing new content.

Is there any way to tell how many times whole books have been downloaded or read online?
This is available in our statistics.  We don’t expect that people are reading whole books online but as more course books become available, that may change.

UCIAS Digital Collections < http://repositories.cdlib.org/uciaspubs/ >
UC sponsored International and Area Studies Digital Collections.  Edited volumes are available as they are published.  Articles are selected to go through peer review.  The peer review process is entirely online.  Once these have been published online, they are immediately available.  This will keep growing.

The eScholarship Repository < http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/ >
There is an administrator for each of the sites, such as the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy.  The Repository was rolled out 1 year ago with 106 ? from 9 campuses.  We just passed the 100,000 downloaded document mark.  Most of the papers are downloaded from outside UC.

bepress provides the software that allows the department, center, or research unit to publish documents via eScholarship.  

Most of the participants that have working papers available have already had their work available online.  It is a non-commercial, scholarly document.

Art Demonstration Project (Laine Farley)
MOAC and OAC images form the basis of a very large collection of images.  Images include maps, but not text images.  Included are MOAC images, AMICO, Saskia, Rumsey Historic Maps, and MoMA Design Collection.  Another 77,000 images are available from the UC campuses.  UCSD’s images (via ARTstor) will be another 220,000 that may be available.  

This will allow for the manipulation of images, enlargement, excellent quality, etc. 

Last week, we were able to view the Saskia and AMICO images.  MOAC should be available by the end of May.  These collections are available from individual web sites.  Additionally, there is a java client that you download that allows you to search across all images.  This will be limited to UC.  

There are questions about whether faculty will really use this software, what kind of support needs to be available, etc.

Assessment plans:  Structured discussions with faculty and grad students are planned and a usability test will be conducted.  We are going to focus on graduate students since a similar Penn State study is already focusing on faculty.

In May or June, we are going to try to persuade faculty or grad students to use these resources in the fall.

SOPAG commissioned a task force on visual resources…what is the relation to this?  This is more the action step whereas the SOPAG report was the planning step.

New on the Horizon
CDL Helpline Software (Jayne Dickson)
See handout.

Users Council Feedback
What worked well; what could stand improvements?

* Keep including who does what on the emails, e.g., Users Council (for distribution).
* If you get a vacation message as a response, do we do anything different…do you notify someone else?
No.  
* Sometimes we get emails about databases that we don’t subscribe to.  Is there any way to target this more accurately?  
CDLAlerts are self-subscribed.  So, no, there is no way to refine this.
* Most CDL groups are not all-campus groups…how does information get out from these groups when not all campuses are on them?
There’s not a single answer to that.  It depends on the group, on a case-by-case basis.
Ellen keeps her ear to the ground and she offers to send to Users Council information that she thinks that campus library staff would want to know.
* When hearing about a new resource…what’s the lag time until new resources are in our local catalog?  There was a hiccup in March when UCSD took over local distribution.  We’ve just hired a consultant to review the entire process of implementing new resources.
* Vendor training…where does this happen?
The training takes place at the campuses or online.
* UCD has its own SFX server. Is it integrated with UC-eLinks?
CDL maintains the information for the CDL subscriptions (about 90%) and then UCD only needs to maintain their campus-specific holdings.  UCD’s server queries our server to pull in the information that it does not include.
* When the full text is supposed to be available but is broken or not available, then the Request link doesn’t appear.  How do we deal with this?  The alternative is to use the local ILL form from campus. We may want to revisit this issue.
* Is the report on SearchLight alternatives available?
No, but we’d be glad to talk to you about what we found out.  Email Laine.
* When will the links to the local catalog be included in the UC-eLinks menu?
This should be in production for the campuses by the beginning of fall quarter/semester 2003.

Session is over at 3:30 PM.