CONTENTS
- PIR Updates Well-attended
- International Coalition of Library Consortia Meeting Report
- Shared Collections Information on the Web
- Mark Needleman Leaves CDL
- CDL Milestones
- Contacts for Questions or Problems
- Information about the CDLINFO-L Listserv
1. PIR Updates Well-attended
Over 70 library staff from all campuses, SRLF, and NRLF joined the project team in mid-October for discussions and status reports of the Patron Initiated Request (PIR) project. PIR is a key strategy, identified by the University Librarians and the Library Planning and Action Initiative, for enhancing resource sharing among all of the campuses of the University. The updates, hosted by UC Irvine and UC San Francisco, covered the background, architecture, interface design, and public information for the project, the first phase of which is to begin in January 1999 (see CDLINFO-L Newsletter, July 16, 1998; Vol. 1, No. 10 at the CDL website for a summary article).Alison Bunting, who has been involved with resource sharing efforts sponsored by HOPS over the last few years, and Jackie Wilson, who is a member of SOPAG and immediate past chair of the ILL subcommittee, led discussions of campus benefits and procedural issues, which helped clarify the goals of the project and possible impacts. The project team received valuable input that will contribute to the implementation of phase I and the design of phase II of the project.
PIR campus liaisons will be announced shortly in CDLINFO. In addition, a listserv for UC library staff and devoted to the implementation of PIR has been established. A website with background and operational documents will be announced shortly.
2. International Coalition of Library Consortia Meeting Report
Beverlee French (CDL) and Cindy Shelton (UCLA) represented the CDL at "COC4." The ICOLC meets twice a year and is a mix of vendor presentations, plenary sessions, and discussion groups. At October's meeting there were 89 attendees, mostly from the U.S., but also from Canada, the UK, Netherlands, South Africa, and Australia.Vendors presentations were by OCLC, Highwire Press, APA (PsycINFO/PsycLIT), UMI/DOW Jones, INSPEC, Biosis, Interactive Knowledge, and Elsevier.
Participants also discussed the ICOLC's newest paper, "Guidelines for Statistical Measures of Usage of Web-Based Indexed, Abstracted, and Full Text Resources." The CDL will become a signatory to this statement, which was based largely on the work of the JSTOR Web Statistics Task Force, on which our UC colleagues David Farrell and Camille Wanat, both of Berkeley, served.
Highlights from the meeting presentations, as well as a link to the statistical guidelines document are available on the shared collections Website (described in the following item) at http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/.
3. Shared Collections Information on the Web
The CDL has established a web site for information related to shared collections activities. Meant primarily for UC Library staff, the site at http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/ contains background documents, information from the Joint Steering Committee for Shared Collections, and other materials. Some materials will be password protected and available only to UC library collections staff. Contact Mary Engle (510-987-0563) for more information.4. Mark Needleman Leaves CDL
Everyone at CDL will miss Mark Needleman, currently the Coordinator of Advanced Technology at CDL Technologies. He will start a new position in December with DRA (Data Research Associates) in St. Louis as a Product Development Specialist in Standards. He will be coordinating DRA's activities in various information and networking standards activities.Mark leaves us in early November after nearly 20 years at DLA and then CDL. He began his career with UCOP, in the very early days of DLA, as a Systems Programmer working on the infant Melvyl Catalog database. Over the years, as the automated database system evolved, Mark evolved too as a Principal Systems Programmer and then Coordinator for Advanced Technology Development.
Mark has been a member of University of California Communications Policy Group Technical Subgroup and of the University Librarians subcommittee of Heads of Systems.
Mark's UC projects include an implementation of the ANSI Z39.50 information retrieval protocol, a prototype OSI testbed network, the implementation of the TULIP project (with Elsevier Science Publishers) to provide access to bit-mapped images of journal articles, and (with IEEE) an investigation of electronic and network delivery of IEEE materials.
Mark's work has included significant contributions outside of UC. He was, for example, one of a two-member team that designed, wrote, and implemented a Department of Defense ARPANET TCP/IP packet switching protocol for the IBM 370.
Representing the University in national activities, Mark has been an active member of EDUCOM and ASIS for many years, and was chair of the ASIS Standards Committee. He was Deputy Project Manager for External Standards for IBM's SHARE and worked with the ANSI X3T5 standards group, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the North American Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery standards subgroup, the Interlibrary Loan Protocol Implementation Group, and the Internet Engineering Task Force. Mark has also been involved in the American Library Association, the Library Information Technology Association, and the Coalition for Networked Information, concentrating on the Z39.50 protocol. Additionally, Mark has been the Editor for a regular column on standards issues for Serials Review.
But all these contributions are not why we at CDL will miss Mark. We will miss his sense of humor (with thanks to Groucho Marx and Woody Allen) and his NY cabbie stories and his great generosity and goodwill throughout these past 19 years.
5. CDL Milestones
CDL Milestones are now posted on the new CDL informational web site [http://www.cdlib.org/] under News and Developments.6. Contacts for Questions or Problems
If you have problems accessing or using the Melvyl 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 melvyl@www.melvyl.ucop.edu.
- Click on "News" on the Melvyl web system (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.
7. Information about the CDLINFO-L Listserv
The CDLINFO-L listserv is designed for UC library employees as a first step in CDL efforts to build an active communications program to inform the UC community about progress in creation 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 listserv to faculty, staff, and students on their
campuses, as appropriate. As a next step in developing a communications
program to reach UC faculty, staff, and students, as well as others outside
of UC who may be interested in our activities, we have launched a web site
with descriptive information about the CDL (
Eligible subscribers: UC library employees
To subscribe: Please send the following line to listserv@listserv.ucop.edu
Frequency of publication: Biweekly, generally on the 1st and 15th of each
month, or as new information warrants.
Communicating with the listserv: While the CDL Listserv does not accept
submissions, subscribers are encouraged to send suggestions, thoughts, and
comments on material in the listserv or on related issues to the CDL at
cdl@ucop.edu.
SUBSCRIBE CDLINFO-L /your name/