CDLINFO LISTSERV, April 25, 2002, Vol.5, No.8

CONTENTS

1. CDL Database Transitions
   1. Round One of Usability Testing Completed on Melvyl-T Interface
2. Information Literacy Article
3. Library Staff News
   1. Kirk Hastings
4. For More Information
   1. CDL News
   2. Contacts for Questions or Problems
   3. Information about CDLINFO

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1. CDL Database Transitions

a. Round One of Usability Testing Completed on Melvyl-T Interface

The first round of usability testing on the Melvyl-T prototype interface was completed April 12 by the Evaluation Liaisons at six campuses: Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. Each campus conducted tests with 3-8 participants, both undergraduate and graduate students (and one faculty member). Participants were offered incentives to take the tests, ranging from gift certificates to Jamba Juice to campus copy cards. A goal was to include some non-native English speakers in the testing, and besides English, languages of the participants included Spanish, Farsi, Tagalog, Hindi, Chinese, and Vietnamese.

The campus Evaluation Liaisons took detailed notes while the participants conducted the tasks, which the CDL provided. All of the notes were sent to the CDL on a spreadsheet, so that the results could be analyzed across users. Campuses debriefed with CDL on the phone after the tests were completed. The results of the testing have informed the CDL on portions of the interface that need enhancing to be more usable for catalog users, and work began almost immediately to improve the interface.

The CDL is very grateful to the campus Evaluation Liaisons, who did an outstanding job of conducting and reporting on the results of their usability tests.

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2. Information Literacy Article

The lead story and several other features in this month's TLtC Webzine and Online Forum focuses on libraries, thanks to Editor Paula Murphy. The lead story, "A 21st Century Challenge: Preparing 'Cut and Paste' Students to be 'Information Literate' Citizens" ( http://www.uctltc.org/news/2002/04/feature.html ) includes information drawn from interviews with UC librarians Dawn Talbot (SD), Patricia Iannuzzi (B), Eleanor Mitchell (LA), Esther Grassian (LA), and Cathy Palmer (I). Other articles include an interview with UC Merced University Librarian Bruce Miller (http://www.uctltc.org/news/2002/04/merced.html), and News from the CDL http://www.uctltc.org/news/2002/04/cdl.html ) . The Webzine is aimed at UC Faculty and staff, particularly instructional technology professionals.

You can discuss these articles, or any library-related issues, on the TLtC Discussion Forums.
http://www.uctltc.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=13

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3. Library Staff News

a. Kirk Hastings

Kirk Hastings joined the CDL staff on April 15th as a Programmer/Analyst in John Ober's Strategic Development unit. Kirk has extensive structured text experience (SGML and XML), including writing software to transform text from various formats into one standard format.

Kirk is no stranger to the University of California. As a library school student at San Jose State University, he served as a digital library intern at UC Berkeley. There he created the Jack London Collection (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/), which quickly became, and remains, the definitive Jack London site on the Internet. Berkeley was impressed enough with Kirk that he was hired to manage the Mellon Foundation-funded SCAN project jointly administered with UC Press. In that capacity he brought over sixty books and one journal to online publication using SGML (still available at http://www-ucpress.berkeley.edu:3030/dynaweb/public/books/).

Following that experience, he was snatched up by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, at the University of Virginia, where he gained additional programming and structured text experience. We are thrilled he has returned to UC and look forward to using his talents and experience to help support eScholarship, the Online Archive of California, and other CDL projects.

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4. For More Information

a. CDL News

Several items of interest, including "Milestones," "Progress Reports," "What's New," and previous issues of CDLINFO are posted on the CDL web site (http://www.cdlib.org/) under News and Developments. Please share news of this resource with your colleagues!

Remember also that reports, working documents, and status information of particular interest to library staff, are all available at http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/.

b. Contacts for Questions or Problems

If you have problems accessing or using the system or have questions, including questions about the status of electronic journal collections and Internet resources, you can contact CDL staff in one of the following ways:

• For immediate assistance, call the CDL Helpline at (510) 987-0555. Callers with TDD equipment, please call 1-800-735-2929 in California for the telephone relay operator.
• Send an e-mail message to cdl@www.cdlib.org.
• Click on "News" at http://www.dbs.cdlib.org/ (also known as http://www.melvyl.ucop.edu) for information about system outages, problems with particular databases, the status of a resource, etc.

For information about whether your UC campus has access to a particular electronic journal or Internet resource, contact your local collection development officer.

c. Information about CDLINFO

CDLINFO is designed to inform UC Librarians, and the UC community, about the progress of the CDL, policy issues under discussion, and newly available electronic resources. We hope that subscribers from the UC libraries will pass on selected information from the newsletter to faculty, staff, and students on their campuses, as appropriate. More complete information about the CDL, as well as the Directory of Collections and Services which leads to digital resources, is available at the CDL website at http://www.cdlib.org.

Eligible subscribers: UC library employees

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CDLINFO is also published on the web at http://www.cdlib.org/news/cdlinfo/

Frequency of publication: Biweekly, or as new information warrants.

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