CDL recently hosted a webinar series for Users Council that’s now widely available to UC staff.  (The CDL’s Users Council is a group responsible for communicating information between the CDL and the campuses concerning use of CDL tools, services and collections.  Users Council consists of a liaison from each UC campus, including LBNL, LLNL and the Regional Library Facilities.  A CDL representative is an ex officio member. ) 

The topics covered were chosen through a member survey, with survey expertise provided by CDL’s Senior Assessment Analyst Jane Lee. 

This year there were six lively sessions covering the following ground:

• Melvyl: A Snapshot of Issues, Patricia Martin, Director, Discovery & Delivery and Lena Zentall, Project Manager, Discovery & Delivery
• Services Today & Tomorrow, Laine Farley, Executive Director, CDL
• What’s Happening in Collections: 15 Triumphs in 30 Minutes, Wendy Parfrey, Shared Content Coordinator
• User Experience Design and CDL, Rachael Hu, User Experience Design Manager
• eScholarship: Supporting OA Scholarly Communication at UC, Catherine Mitchell, Director, Access& Publishing; Justin Gonder, eScholarship Product Manager; and Katie Fortney, Copyright Policy & Education Officer
• HathiTrust and Mass Digitization, Heather Christenson, Mass Digitization Project Manager

Each of the one-hour recordings, along with PowerPoint slides, is available for your viewing at:   http://www.cdlib.org/groups/users_council/

(The presentations are password protected because some of the information is not for public consumption.)

The focus of the meeting was driven in part by answers to a Users Council survey conducted in advance of the meeting. 

Presentations covered such colorful topics as Flying Pigs and Other Wonders; Libraries as Partners in Research: the UC Curation Center’s Tools and Services; Collections in the Cloud: Shared Collection Development in a Changing Climate; Discovery & Delivery Services: A Peek Behind the Scenes; How HathiTrust Serves the UC Community; Open Access Publishing Solutions for UC; and OAC & Calisphere: New Tools and User Data.  Because some of the information is sensitive, you will need to sign-in with a password, available here.

From your desktop, you can attend sessions on CDL program activities tailored for Users Council.   UC campuses and selected California institutions have a Users Council member who monitors communications to and from the CDL, serves as a local expert on CDL activities, and performs other activities between the CDL and the institution.  CDL usually hosts an annual Users Council meeting in Oakland, California each spring.  Because of fiscal stringencies this year, however, instead of hosting a face-to-face meeting, CDL utilized web conferencing software, ReadyTalk, to host our sessions. 

You can learn more about CDL programs by viewing the web streamed and PowerPoint presentations available on the Users Council website http://www.cdlib.org/groups/users_council/  

Sessions this year covered CDL Publishing Services; Discovery & Delivery; the University of California Curation Center (UC3); Digital Special Collections; mass digitization and HathiTrust; collection negotiations, purchasing and licensing; and a round robin with input from Users Council members. 

CDL is in the process of surveying the effectiveness of this method of delivering and exchanging information.

Attendees at this year’s lively Users Council meeting in Oakland (April 10, 2009) learned about an array of CDL programs and services and how they interact with our campuses, partners, and other national and international initiatives.  Participants also had the opportunity to chat and interact with the speakers and each other.

You can see the presentations, too, on these topics:

eScholarship Publishing Services: New & Enhanced – Elise Proulx, Outreach & Marketing Coordinator, eScholarship Publishing Program

Bibliographic Services: What we do for you: Next Generation Melvyl, Melvyl, Request, UC-eLinks – Leslie Wolf & Lena Zentall, Project Managers, Bibliographic Services

Re-envisioning Digital Preservation: Web Archiving Services – Perry Willett, Digital Preservation Services Manager and Tracy Seneca, Web Archiving Coordinator

Digital Special Collections: OAC Redesign; UC Image Service Update – Rosalie Lack, Director, Digital Special Collections

Re-envisioning (and Re-purposing) Collections: including Mass Digitization, Google, and the HathiTrust – Ivy Anderson, Director, Collection Development & Management

What does it all mean? CDL Overview – Laine Farley, Executive Director

Full notes, including questions and answers, and slides are available at
http://www.cdlib.org/groups/users_council/

On Friday, May 9, the Users Council met in downtown Oakland for its annual meeting.  The group, representing all of the UC campuses, the national labs, and a group of other California partners, heard about and discussed a host of issues: CDL trends, eScholarship publishing, the Web Archiving Service, Bibliographic Services (UC-eLinks, Request, Metalib, Next Generation Melvyl Pilot), Digital Special Collections (Calisphere, OAC, and the UC image service), and Mass Digitization activities.  The day ended with a lively round robin of the group’s most important local initiatives.

For more information and to see the presentations from the meeting, go to http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/users_council/05092008_ucnotes.html.

You didn’t have to be there to find out about it!  Simply follow the URL to read and view the PowerPoint presentations at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/groups/users_council/05112007_notes.html.

The afternoon was devoted to an update of Bibliographic Services, including the Melvyl Catalog, UC-eLinks, the Electronic Resources Management System (ERMS – Verde) and the Bibliographic Services Task Force.  Other topics covered were Licensed Content and Request, and the reorganization of the Digital Library Services unit of the CDL.

In addition to one member from every UC campus, the Users Council has representatives from the California Academy of Sciences, the California Historical Society, the California State Library, the California State University Libraries, the Getty Research Library, Graduate Theological Union, Hastings College of the Law, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore Lab, NRLF, SRLF, and Stanford University.

The meeting afforded an opportunity to inform members about current activities related to CDL projects, programs, and services, and to have an exchange of ideas and a time to answer questions.  For more information, contact your Users Council Representative.

Topics discussed during the morning session included UC-eLinks, Google Scholar, Metasearch, scholarly communication, the Melvyl Catalog, and Request.  The afternoon was devoted to brief overviews of image services, digital site building, the Digital Preservation Repository and the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), assessment at CDL, the American West Project, and the public site.

In addition to one member from every UC campus, the Users Council also has representatives from the California Academy of Sciences, the California Historical Society, the California State Library, the California State University Libraries, the Getty Research Library, Graduate Theological Union, Hastings College of the Law, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore Lab, NRLF, SRLF, and Stanford University.

The meeting afforded an opportunity to inform members about current activities related to CDL projects, programs, and services, and to have an exchange of ideas and a time to answer questions.

For more information, contact your Users Council Representative.