UC-eLinks Liaison Charge

As of September 3, 2003

Background

Following the success of SFX for providing linking services among CDL-licensed resources, campus libraries expressed interest in using it for their locally licensed resources. CDL negotiated the license for adding campus versions and worked with ExLibris on technical enhancements to present combined services to users. The UC-eLinks liaisons will participate in the implementation phase of adding local resources to campus versions (known as "instances") of SFX. Instances may be hosted at the CDL or at the campus; the CDL is prepared to host any and all instances.

CDL has formed an internal project team to deal with all implementation aspects of UC-eLinks and associated services including Request. There will be at least two campus members of the project team. The team charge and more information is on the UC-eLinks Project web site. The team will provide guidance to the liaisons.

The CDL Tools and Services Working group has developed an initial set of principles and priorities to guide decisions about adding services. They will be consulting with campus libraries on future services and the Liaisons will also participate in this activity.

Skills

• Comfort with and proactive ability to gather information and consult with relative campus principals re: license (new and changed) for the A&I databases and e-journal providers.
• Understanding of bibliographic data in order to gather the information need (title, ISSNs, coverage and provider) for individual e-journals for entry into the campus instance.

Responsibilities

Phase 1-Focus on e-journals as "targets" of UC-eLinks (March - June 2003)

• Identify the providers (publishers or aggregators) of locally licensed e-journals and communicate the list to the CDL.
• For each provider list the titles and the electronic coverage included in the campus's license.
• Activate journals for each provider, with a target parser, in the campus instance of UC-eLinks.
• Test that the links in UC-eLinks are working.

Phase 2-Focus on adding campus-licensed A&I databases as "sources" (starting points) for UCeLinks (July - September 2003).

• Identify locally licensed A&I database vendors and the databases licensed and communicate the list to the CDL.
• Verify that the vendor databases are OpenURL aware and if they are arrange for an account for testing UC-eLinks.
• Test UC-eLinks for each database and determine if UC-eLinks should be activated in the production version of the database.
• If necessary, work with the database vendors to enhance the vendor's OpenURL support to provide the best level of linking possible.
• Coordinate the implementation of the UC-eLinks icon in the production database.

Ongoing

• Maintain locally licensed e-journal holdings in the campus instance of UC-eLinks as licenses are added, renewed or cancelled and individual title coverage changes.
• Communicate database changes (new or canceled) to the CDL so the appropriate changes can be made in UC-eLinks.

CDL will provide support for the liaisons as follows:

Phase 1 (March - June 2003)

• Provide UC-eLinks administration training for the liaisons.
• Develop or modify target parsers.
• Batch load target files prepared by the campuses. The files should be in the CDL/ExLibris defined format.

Phase 2 (July - September 2003)

• Support liaisons who are talking to vendors about enabling, enhancing or developing support for linking using OpenURLs.
• Develop or modify source parsers.
• Activate sources in UC-eLinks.

Ongoing

• Provide documentation such as background information, a trouble-shooting guide, etc.
• Provide troubleshooting of linking problems.
• Develop and modify target and source parsers as needed.
• Maintain the UC-eLinks Knowledge Base using the monthly updates provided by ExLibris.

Term

Liaisons will serve a 2 year term.

There should be one liaison per campus but the CDL encourages every campus to have one or two backups for the liaison.

Communication & workload

There will be a listserv for communication between the liaisons and CDL as well as a web UC-eLinks liaison web site. Margery Tibbetts and Lena Shelton will be the primary contacts at the CDL for the liaisons.

The CDL will continue to communicate problems and enhancement requests (new parsers) to ExLibris. Beyond initial training there is no expectation for face-to-face meetings, although liaisons will help determine if that is true.

After startup the workload will primarily focus on adding and maintaining data for campus-licensed sources (A&I databases) and targets (e-journals, local OPACs, etc.). The workload will thus vary from campus to campus and depend upon the number of resources or amount of activity in licensing these resources. Some economies may be realized for "Tier 2" resources licensed by a subset of the campuses, i.e. by sharing or replicating data from one campus to others that have also licensed the same resource. The CDL will be able to assist in replicating the "Tier 2" information across all of the campus instances once it has been added to a single instance. "Tier 2" resources licensed by all of the campus will be in the CDL instance.