.       View the collection on the OAC

A soldier’s story

Henry O. Nightingale (1844-1919) was an abolitionist from Rochester, New York who at 18 years of age enlisted in the Northern army at the start of the Civil War. Nightingale fought in numerous battles, including the Battle of Gettysburg.

Nightingale’s account of the war is brought to life in the new digital collection, which comprises two handwritten diaries (1864-1865) and an undated portrait of the soldier with his sabre and Union hat. A majority of entries in both diaries describe the weather and Nightingale’s daily activities during his military service. The 1864 diary is notable for its descriptions of company and regimental movement, as well as a gunshot wound Nightingale suffered at the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia.

The 1865 diary describes one of the most infamous events in American history. On April 14, Nightingale attended a performance at Ford’s Theatre. There, he witnessed the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. Nightingale recounted the horrific scene, writing:

…in the last act, a most astonishing crime was committed the President.  Mr. Lincoln, shot through the head; the assassin then leaped out of the box on the stage and drew a large dagger and exclaimed “I have done it. Virginia is avenged. Hic [sic] semper tyrannis” and made his escape.

The outraged Union soldier went on to write, “God pity the rebellion now for Men will show no mercy; death to every Confederate, every Rebel sympathizer.”

.       Read Nightingale’s account of Lincoln’s assassination

If you find the handwriting difficult to read, don’t distress. Student assistants at the UC Merced Library have been transcribing the diaries, and the transcriptions will be added later this spring.

A missing autograph

The digitization of the diaries was actually part of an effort to uncover Lincoln’s signature and possible last written words. A historian and genealogist named Steve Nagy, along with his brother and a cousin, had inherited letters Nightingale wrote to their ancestor—probably as a “pen pal” during the war. In 2007, while transcribing the letters, a member of the Digital Library Team at Villanova University discovered a surprising passage:

I, the afternoon of the fatal day, had the pleasure of seeing the departed one, my object in going to see him was to get his Autograph in my Album. he, the President took it and wrote with his own hand several lines.

In other words, Nightingale claimed to have an autograph and inscription from Lincoln on the day he died.

Mr. Nagy, his curiosity piqued, undertook to find Nightingale’s heirs and see if they had additional materials where the autograph might be penned. The search took him to California, and eventually to Edith Denio, a great-granddaughter of Nightingale’s who was in possession of the diaries. Ms. Denio generously allowed UC Merced staff to digitize the diaries for public access and study.

And what of the autograph? Unfortunately it did not turn up in the diaries. Either it is in another volume, or—as Mr. Nagy conjectures—Nightingale embellished the story in the letter to his pen pal, and did not actually procure a signature from President Lincoln.

The making of a digital collection

The publication of this collection is the result of countless hours and hard work at the UC Merced Library. Since the diaries are physically fragile and quite long—together they contain several hundreds of pages—they presented a challenge to library staff.

Head of Digital Assets Emily Lin and a student assistant employed gentle, labor-intensive methods to scan the thin handwritten pages, as well as the many newspaper clippings and poems pasted into one of the diaries. Student assistants painstakingly cataloged and transcribed the diaries. Library Services Manager Mary Weppler-Selear took on the digital curation of the collection as a capstone project for a certificate in digital information management. She supervised the students, created metadata, and did all of the technical work required to contribute the collection to the CDL’s access and preservation repositories.

The Nightingale collection is available on the OAC and Calisphere, and has been deposited in the Merritt digital curation repository—thus ensuring both broad public access to and long-term preservation of these historically significant materials.

Explore other first-hand stories

Handwritten letters and diaries comprise some of the most engrossing material available on the OAC and Calisphere. If you like the Nightingale diary, you may also be interested in the diary of Patrick Breen, member of the Donner Party; the letters of John Muir, and words and writings from the Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive.

As the scholarly publishing landscape heats up with more talk of boycotts and Open Access mandates, research libraries increasingly find themselves at a crossroads between publishers and faculty — and eagerly working to provide new solutions to entrenched problems.  The California Digital Library’s (CDL) latest foray into this space, on behalf of the University of California system, focuses on supporting open source publishing infrastructure through a major development partnership with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP).

As a result of this agreement, the CDL will assist with PKP’s ongoing development and support of its open source software suite — Open Journal Systems (OJS), Open Conference Systems (OCS), and Open Harvester System (OHS), with Open Monograph Press (OMP) due for release in the coming year.

Chuck Eckman, Dean of Library Services at Simon Fraser University stated: “The California Digital Library is widely recognized for its record of innovation and leadership in the domain of scholarly publishing and the SFU Library is thrilled at the prospects this new collaborative venture creates for advancing our shared scholarly communication goals.”  Laine Farley, Executive Director of CDL, noted, “Not only are we extremely pleased with the flexibility afforded by OJS, we are also delighted to join this growing international community and contribute to the future growth of this publishing solution.”

The California Digital Library, in partnership with the University of California campus libraries, supports and encourages open access publishing initiatives within the UC system through its eScholarship publishing and institutional repository platform. eScholarship provides a suite of open access, scholarly publishing services and research tools that enable departments, research units, publishing programs, and individual scholars associated with the University of California to have direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship.  Home to 45 peer-reviewed journals (http://escholarship.org/uc/search?smode=browse;browse-journal=aa), eScholarship has recently transitioned to OJS as its journal management and submission system and has integrated OJS with its pre/post-print, books and working papers repository, which contains more than 45,000 UC-affiliated publications. 

John Willinsky, Khosla Family Professor of Education at Stanford University, Library Scholar in Residence and Professor (Limited Term) in Publishing Studies at Simon Fraser University, and founding Director of PKP stated: “Given the leadership, innovation, and engagement shown by CDL in moving scholarly communication into a digital era marked by a spirit of greater openness and sharing aimed at the advancement of learning, this partnership provides a wonderful opportunity for PKP to further explore ways that faculty and librarians can work together to make more of what we do more of a public good.”

The California Digital Library provides digital library development and support for the University of California libraries and the communities they serve.  The CDL Publishing Group delivers open access digital publication services to the University of California academic community, supports widespread distribution of UC research materials, and fosters new models of scholarly publishing through the development and application of advanced technologies. (For further information contact Catherine Mitchell, director of CDL Publishing at catherine.mitchell@ucop.edu 510.587.6132.)

PKP is dedicated to improving the scholarly and public quality of research.  With more than 11,500 installations of Open Journal Systems (OJS); Open Conference Systems (OCS); and Open Harvester Systems (OHS) around the world, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) has proven that open source software can be a game changer in scholarly publishing.

In September 2011, PKP officially launched a major sustainability campaign to ensure the continued development and enhancement of its open source software suite and to provide better support for the growing PKP user community.  To find out more about this initiative and how your site can become a PKP sponsor visit the PKP Web site at http://pkp.sfu.ca.

April 30^th, 2012: “The Broad Value of Web Archives: Demonstrated Use” – Washington DC

This open session is part of the 2012 International Internet Preservation Consortium meeting, and is hosted by the Library of Congress.   The IIPC is seeking presentations from a wide variety of organizations from sectors that are saving and using archival content from the web. The goal is to expose the audience to how rich and valuable the web is as a resource and reveal some unexpected uses for web archives. Possible topics include:

• web archives used in legal discovery or for legal compliance
• web archives in personal collections, i.e. personal archiving
• web archives used in data mining
• web archives used in corporate or organizational archives

Further details and additional suggested topics are available on the on the IIPC Call for Participation page: http://netpreserve.org/events/2012.php  If you are interested in participating in this conference, please send a short paragraph or two describing the project you would like to present to Abigail Potter, IIPC Communications Officer, abpo@loc.gov  by February 28, 2012

August 15-17, 2012: “Inside and Outside the Box – Archives and Records Management in the 21st century” – Auckland, New Zealand

The Archives and Records Management Association of New Zealand (ARANZ) invites you to submit papers about projects, ideas, experiences or research findings related to the conference theme ‘Inside and Outside the Box – Archives and Records Management in the 21st century’, to be held in Auckland, New Zealand on the 15-17th August 2012. This intentionally broad theme is designed to give speakers the freedom to talk about the current opportunities and challenges they face in the information management and heritage fields. 

Proposals are due by March 10^th; further detail and instructions for submission are available from the conference website: http://www.aranz.org.nz/Site/events/Conferences/2012_Conference.aspx

Code4Lib streaming at: http://www.livestream.com/code4lib

If you’re curious to learn more about what it takes to archive and index 37 TB of data, join Erik and Scott on Wednesday.  Slides will be posted on WAS News following the session.

By Perry Willett, Digital Preservation Services Manager

Merritt Service Description
Merritt is a production level service that provides the UC community with an easy to use tool to manage, archive, and share their content. Content can be deposited and managed via a user-interface or an API.

Merritt Service Managers
Perry Willett (perry.willett@ucop.edu) and Adrian Turner (adrian.turner@ucop.edu) or uc3@ucop.edu.

Merritt Training Materials, Guides, FAQs and Webinars
More information about Merritt is available at http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/merritt or by sending an inquiry to uc3@ucop.edu.

See also Merritt webinars: http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/uc3webinars.html.

Recent Enhancements, News, and Activities

• We are working on a funding model for Merritt, and have drafted a white paper that analyzes the Total Cost of Preservation. We are beginning to circulate copies of the white paper for comment.
• UC3 is a DataONE Member Node. DataONE will soon release a production version of their software. We continue to work with the UC Davis Information Center for the Environment to receive their data and their data will be part of the DataONE collection. 
• The CDL, UCSF’s CTSI & UCSF’s Library are working collaboratively with the UCSF DataShare project.  DataShare will use Merritt and other services to manage, share, and provide access to biomedical data. The development schedule is being developed but DataShare’s goals to facilitate data sharing, discovery and reuse, mesh well with many other of our clients and partners, and the features developed will benefit many other clients.
• We have begun work with the SDSC Cloud Storage service, leading to the eventual transfer of our current storage to the SDSC Cloud. This is just part of our ongoing strategy to keep storage costs low for our clients. 
• The UC Berkeley Transportation Studies Library has begun to deposit their collections of reports into Merritt.
• UCSC continues to add sound recordings to their Merritt collection.

Service Monitoring and Availability
Check Merritt’s system status page http://www.cdlib.org/contact/system.html.

By Joan Starr, EZID Service Manager

Service Description

EZID (easy-eye-dee) is a production service that makes it simple for digital object producers (researchers and others) to obtain and manage long-term identifiers for their digital content. EZID makes objects easier to access, re-use and verify. As a result, it also makes it possible to increase citations, to build on previous work, to conduct new research, and avoid duplicating previous efforts.

EZID Service Manager

Joan Starr joan.starr@ucop.edu or uc3@ucop.edu

Training Materials, Guides, FAQs and Webinars
FAQs: http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/ezid/faq.html

Service guidelines: http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/docs/EZIDServiceGuidelines.pdf

Webinars and presentations:  http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/uc3webinars.html

Additional information about EZID is available at http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/ezid/index.htm  or by sending an inquiry to uc3@ucop.edu.

Presentations

Joan Starr gave three presentations on data management, data citation, metadata and EZID, at the American Library Association Midwinter meeting January 21^st and 22^nd. Approximately 200 librarians attended the combined sessions. Slides are linked here: http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/uc3webinars.html.

EZID Partners and Clients

Current EZID clients include academic institutions, government agencies, non-profit organizations and a commercial entity. New additions since last update are in bold.

• UC Berkeley Library (on behalf of the UC Berkeley campus)
• UC Los Angeles (on behalf of the UC LA campus)
• UC San Diego Library (on behalf of the UC San Diego campus)
• UC Santa Cruz Library
• UC Santa Barbara Library (on behalf of the UC Santa Barbara campus)
• American Astronomical Society  (http://www.aas.org )
• Centre national de documentation pédagogique  (http://www.cndp.fr/)
• Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (http://ciser.cornell.edu/)
• The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR)  (http://www.tdar.org/)
• Dryad Data Repository  (http://datadryad.org/ )
• Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Data Stewardship & Preservation Cluster (http://www.esipfed.org/)
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center  (http://www.fhcrc.org/)
• LabArchives  (http://www.labarchives.com/)
• The National Center for Atmospheric Research (http://ncar.ucar.edu/)
• National Atmospheric and Space Administration (NASA)’s Goddard Space Flight Center (http://earthdata.nasa.gov/)
• Qualitative Data Repository, CQRM  (http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/moynihan/cqrm/About_CQRM/
• USGS/Earth Sciences Data Clearinghouse <formerly National Biological Info. Infrastructure)

One additional UC Library is in the process of acquiring EZID: UC Merced.

Current Activities

• Since the last report, EZID implemented a new API feature: EZID Status Checking. This is helpful for EZID clients who have automated workflows. Being able to checking system status programmatically can be important.
• In January, new EZID outreach materials were made available on the EZID website (http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/ezid/). Now, the materials include a customizable postcard as well as a flyer so that libraries that offer EZID as a service can add local contact information as desired.
• The EZID user interface redesign project continues on schedule. Expected completion is in the 1^st quarter of 2012.

Service Statistics

Since June 25, 2010, EZID has had an uptime performance 99.9%. Check EZID’s system status at http://www.cdlib.org/contact/system.html.

By Perry Willett, Digital Preservation Services Manager

DMPTool Service Description
The Data Management Plan Tool (DMPTool) provides an easy to use interface that:

• Helps users create ready-to-use data management plans for specific funding agencies
• Meets funder requirements for data management plans
• Provides step-by-step instructions and guidance on how to manage data
• Provides information about resources and services available at your institution to help fulfill the data management requirements of your grant

DMPTool Service Manager
Perry Willett (perry.willett@ucop.edu), Trisha Cruse (patricia.cruse@ucop.edu) or uc3@ucop.edu. Note that campus library contacts have been embedded in the DMPTool and campus users will be directed to a local library contact.

DMPTool Training Materials, Guides, FAQs and Webinars
Help Guide:  https://dmp.cdlib.org/help/guide

Shibboleth Login:  UC Davis configured their Shibboleth identity provider for the DMPTool in January. There are now 7 UC campuses using Shibboleth to log into the DMPTool:

• UCB
• UCD
• UCI
• UCLA
• UCM
• UCSD
• UCSF

In addition, 12 other universities, including 1 CSU lab and 4 CSU campuses, configured their Shibboleth identity providers for the DMPTool in January, bringing the total to 32.

Presentations:  Carly Strasser and Perry Willett gave two webinars on data management, targeting UC researchers and scientists in January, on January 11^th and 19^th. Almost 200 people attended the webinars. Recording and PowerPoint slides are linked here: http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/uc3webinars.html.

Recent Enhancements, News, and Activities
Support for the IMLS data management requirements was added in January, as well as a new video demo.

62 new users from UC campuses set up accounts in the DMPTool in January. There are a total of 290 UC users, and they created 58 data management plans in January. The greatest activity was at Santa Cruz, where their users created some 15 plans.

Overall, there were a total of 374 unique users in January, up over 60% from the previous month.  They created 300 data management plans, also up over 60%.

A  face-to-face meeting of the partner institutions in Berkeley was held in January. In addition to representatives from the original partners at CDL, UCLA, UCSD, Smithsonian Institution, and U of Illinois and U of Virginia, we included new partners from UCB, ICPSR, US Geologic Survey and Digital Library Federation.  We mapped out plans for the next phase of development, and ideas for governance and funding. We will produce a report from the meeting.

A  user survey, linked from the webpage received 70 responses; results below:

5)  Further comments. Summarizing the comments:

• Thanks for providing the DMPTool
• Improve the speed
• Add blank templates (these exist, so we need to make them more obvious)
• Formats mangled when exporting a plan
• Make it easy for institutions to customize
• More examples of DMPs
• Allow multiple users to work on same DMP
• Support for institutional requirements

Service Monitoring and Availability
Problems have been identified in adding the DMPTool to the CDL Systems Status page: http://www.cdlib.org/contact/system.html

We will continue to work to get the DMPTool adding to this page. Meantime, we monitor the availability and performance of the DMPTool.

The Council of University Librarians, in consultation with several All Campus Groups and SOPAG, has endorsed CDL’s plan to move the management of UC’s VDX application from in-house at CDL to hosting at OCLC. The completed implementation is targeted for mid-June of 2012.

This change will allow CDL to continue its responsibility for VDX production services while sharing some of the system management duties with OCLC.  Looking to the future, UC will be well positioned to work with OCLC on implementing a new software solution when VDX is retired in 3-5 years, as OCLC has previously announced.

 What will change for UC?

•  CDL will continue to provide first level triage of all of the ILL units’ user support tickets, but OCLC will now have the ultimate responsibility for ensuring timely and satisfactory resolution of all tickets.  CDL will continue to work very closely with OCLC here.
• OCLC will now have primary responsibility for all software upgrades. CDL, along with campus participants will test and certify the upgrades before they are put into production.

 What will change for ILL units?

•  ILL units will use a new “Windows” login to access the VDX application at its new host location. (The current “Web” login will not change.) CDL will communicate separately with the ILL units to provide detailed instructions and ensure a smooth transition to the new “Windows” login.
• The two campuses that run special reports, UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara, will receive their data by a slightly different method. CDL will work with OCLC and these campuses to ensure they receive the data they need.

 What will change for our end users?

•  Nothing. This change will be transparent to our end users.

 Moving forward

•  CDL has begun working with OCLC to develop a timeline and project plan, which we will share within the UC libraries when it is finalized.
• CDL will be asking the CDL ILL Operations Team and each of the campus ILL units for assistance in testing during April 2012. We will keep you updated on our progress and let you know well in advance the dates when we will ask for your help to test or review the rollout.

Teal Smith (UCM), the Resource Liaison for PsycINFO (on the ProQuest/CSA Illumina platform), has notified CDL that some PsycINFO records are missing journal issue publication dates.   This problem is expected to be resolved by the end of March.   

 From ProQuest technical support: “reported records have been corrected.  All records going forward will contain the year date, and the remaining records will be corrected in the yearly reload which is fast approaching [March].”

 The problem seems to be fairly widespread. Below is a screenshot of some examples.  Teal reports, “I did a sample search for ‘china’ and ranked by relevancy (ranking defaults to the most recent, but the problem was fixed for recent records).  On the first page, 12 of 25 records were missing the date.”

Anchored Phrase Search

New support is provided for performing left and right anchored phrase search by using the “=” within a phrase search.  Titles and subtitles are both searched (both the 245 $a and 245 $b subfields).  Previously only “:” was used to identify index labels. However, this new feature has a specific meaning.  For example, the query: ti=”gone with the wind” searches for the anchored phrase “gone with the wind” in the title (ti) index.   Any available index can be used with “=” in a search.  Regular phrase searching does not require double quotes in the search, so there is no constraint of having to enclose the value in double quotes.

Note: This is a feature UC librarians have asked for repeatedly—please check it out.

Facet Persistence

Many users tend to use their browser’s back button to navigate back and forth between the brief results and detail record pages in Melvyl.  Previously, this action would lose the user’s facet selections in the left sidebar, causing the user to have to reset their facet selections.  Now, facet choice persists when the browser back is used.  However, facets are not persistent for the entire search session, for example, once a new search is entered; facets are cleared, giving the user the opportunity to select appropriate facets for the new search.

Boolean Operators Change

Boolean word operators now only work when used in all caps (AND, OR, NOT).   Lowercase versions of these words have been added to the Common Word Exclusion list. 

Common Word Exclusion List Updated

Below is the updated exclusion list:

English: a an and (lowercase) are as at be but by for from had have he her his how in is it not (lowercase) of on or (lowercase) that the this to was which with you

French: de la le les des un une

German: der das dass du er sie es wer wie mit am im in aus auf ist sein wird ihr ihre ihres als von mit dich dir mich mir mein sein kein wird

Course Reserves Enhancement

Note: This currently impacts only the UCI library, which is piloting use of the course reserves feature in Melvyl.

Course Maintainers and Course Managers now have the ability to enter in “Notes” on an item even if item appears in more than one course.  This offers the ability to insert specific notes for students (similar to what you would see in a syllabus), e.g. “Read Chapters 2-6, 12-14.”