CDLINFO Newsletter, September 21, 2006, Vol. 9, No. 15
CONTENTS
- New Resource Available
- North American Women’s Drama
- Latino Literature
- SCP Use of OpenURLs
- Library Staff News
- Alison Ray Joined the CDL as an Information Services Analyst
- For More Information
- News and Publications
- Contacts for Questions or Problems
- About CDLINFO
1. New Resource Available
a. North American Women’s Drama
By Jane Faulkner (UC Santa Barbara), Resource Liaison
North American Women’s Drama is a full-text database of 1500 plays written by women from the United States and Canada from the Colonial period to the present. Many of the works are rare or out of print, and nearly a quarter of the collection consists of previously unpublished plays. Each is extensively indexed and can be searched by a keyword in the play itself, or by such topics as production company, sexual orientation of an author or character, setting (“London –house—interior”), costume designer, and any number of equally creative and useful fields. As is true with all Alexander Street Press databases, the semantic indexing combined with the thesaurus allows users to hunt up answers to questions such as “Which plays written before 1890 treat the subject of divorce?” and “are there any monologues by female characters who are dancers?”
Plays are accompanied by reference materials. Fun side note: the “showcase” link from the NAWD home page features color images of playbills, brochures, flyers, and postcards.
CDL has purchased perpetual rights to North American Women's Drama on behalf of future UC scholars.
b. Latino Literature
By Jane Faulkner (UC Santa Barbara), CDL Resource Liaison
Latino Literature claims to be the most comprehensive collection of Latino literature yet created, and it may well be. When complete (in spring 2007) it will contain 450 plays and more than 100,000 pages of fiction and poetry, from 1848 to the present. The themes addressed in these writings cover the entire spectrum of Latino issues, from the struggle for independence to political and economic advancement, social protest, migration, exile, and life in the barrios, making Latino Literature a significant resource for a wide range of academic disciplines.
The term “Latino” in this database includes all citizens of the United States whose heritage is Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central American, and South American. About 80 percent of the texts are still in copyright and nearly a quarter of the collection consists of items that have never been published before. Most of the texts are in English, with selected works of particular importance Spanish.
Those familiar with other Alexander Street Press databases will recognize the standard interface which allows for multi-field searching in areas such as ethnicity, occupation, character names, composers, production companies, and the like. A quick browse through the subjects listing on the Latino Literature homepage shows the range of the collection and the depth of the indexing. See the resources section for an interesting gallery of images of playbills, flyers, programs brochures, and postcards.
CDL has purchased perpetual rights to NA Women's Drama on behalf of future UC scholars.
2. SCP Use of OpenURLs
Becky Culbertson, Manager, Shared Cataloging Program, reported that on July 1, SCP catalogers began to use SFX OpenURLs on new and existing serial records. These URLs will be used in lieu of PIDs to the greatest extent possible. The same URL, depending on IP address range, points to the UC-eLinks screen that reflects the local campus instance of what is licensed or available as open access. There will continue to be multiple points of access in a record, but, over time, each of the different PIDs will be replaced by one SFX OpenURL which will then take the patron to a screen of choices. The syntax looks like this:
http://openurl.cdlib.org/?sid=SCP&genre=article&char_set=utf88&issn=xxxx-xxxx
One benefit of this type of URL is that, even though the SFX OpenURL is longer than a PID, the URL itself is predictable -- all that is needed is the ISSN of a journal, and for those journal titles that are turned on in the UC-eLinks Knowledge Base, the ISSN can be substituted for the xxxx-xxxx (above) and users will be taken to the SFX screen that represents the holdings for their campus, as in this example:
http://openurl.cdlib.org/?sid=SCP&genre=article&char_set=utf88&issn=0123-4567
Why is this being done? The reason for this change is to bring into closer alignment the representation of the many licensed and open access serials available with the SFX instances that are unique to each campus.
It will not always be possible to use the SFX OpenURLs; for example, SFX OpenURLs cannot generally be created for titles that lack ISSNs. In such cases, PIDs will continue to be used.
In order to remove proprietary-specific formatting (the sfx_local portion below) of the OpenURL, we have recently changed the format of our catalog 856 fields. It will be a little while before the old format is gone, so you may see some records with 856 fields which look like this:
http://ucelinks.cdlib.org:8888/sfx_local?sid=SCP:SCP&genre=article&__char_set=utf8&issn=xxxx-xxxx
For more background information on this topic, please refer to: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/linkres/linkresolverstatement.pdf
3. Library Staff News
a. Alison Ray Joined the CDL as an Information Services Analyst
The CDL very pleased to announce that Alison Ray joined our staff as an Information Services Analyst on Tuesday, September 5. Alison is a recent graduate of the University of Oklahoma, where she received her Master’s Degree in Library and Information Studies. She also has a Master of Arts in Cello Performance from the University of Iowa.
In library school, Alison was a graduate assistant at the University of Oklahoma’s Schusterman Library where she was responsible for faculty current awareness; taught seminars for students and faculty in electronic resources; served at the reference desk; handled interlibrary loan requests (including helping to set up the ILLiad customer interface pages); and provided IT support. She has also done website design. In addition, Alison performed reference, teaching, Excel training, and on-the-fly cataloging at the Hardesty Regional Library in Tulsa, where she received an award for outstanding customer service.
In another part of her life, Alison has taught cello technique, sight reading and basic music theory at the Cedar Rapids Symphony School.
Alison will be serving on the CDL Helpline, and working on customer support and other CDL projects and services.
4. For More Information
a. News and Publications
News and events, press releases, reports and guidelines, and articles published by CDL staff are posted on the CDL web site. Please share news of this resource with your colleagues!
In addition, status information about CDL resources, reports, and working documents of particular interest to library staff are available on the Inside CDL web site.
b. Contacts for Questions or Problems
If you have problems accessing CDL resources or have questions, including questions about the status of electronic journal collections and Internet resources, contact the CDL:
- 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.
- Or, send an email to cdl@www.cdlib.org.
For information about whether your UC campus has access to a particular electronic journal or Internet resource, contact your local collection development officer.
c. About CDLINFO
CDLINFO informs UC librarians and the UC community about the progress of the CDL, policy issues under discussion, and newly available electronic resources. Please share selected information from this newsletter with faculty, staff, and students on the campuses.
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