Vendors & Content Providers

New Developments

Open Letter to Licensed Content Providers concerning the serious economic challenges facing the University of California Libraries

Excerpt:

The University of California Libraries ask all information providers with whom we negotiate content licenses to respond to the major fiscal challenges affecting higher education in California in a spirit of collaboration and mutual problem-solving. We expect to work with each of our vendors at renewal to develop creative solutions that can preserve the greatest amount of content to meet the information needs of the University of California’s students, faculty, and researchers.

The economic crisis affecting libraries is particularly acute in California, which as of this writing (May 2009) is forecasting a $21 billion state budget shortfall for 2010 despite previous efforts to close a $42 billion budget gap in 2009. As a state-supported institution, the University of California has experienced significant budget reductions in fiscal year 2009, with more reductions to come. Coupled with the typical inflationary increases for scholarly publications, the erosion of library buying power will have a profound and lasting impact on all of the UC libraries. We welcome all innovative proposals for managing through these difficult times.

Read the full Open Letter here

The licensing process: Provides an overview of the process for acquiring digital resources.

See sections below:

• Licensing Guidelines
• Technical Guidelines
• UC Enrollment Data
• Resource Liaisons
• Contact Information

Licensing Guidelines

The California Digital Library strongly supports the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) licensing guidelines and requests that vendors and content providers follow them. The ICOLC web site includes information about the preferred practices for the selection and purchase of electronic information, guidelines for statistical measures of usage of web-based text resources, and other important documents.

CDL licensing guidelines:

• CDL standard license agreement: Preferred license terms for all UC licenses for electronic resources. [RTF]
• License agreement checklist: Explains terms that must be addressed in a CDL license. [HTML] [RTF]

Technical Guidelines

CDL requirements for vendors:

• Technical requirements for vendors: Includes information about major technical issues, CDL's preferred solutions, and the implications for vendors.
• Requirements for database vendors.  April 2006 [RTF]
• Requirements for ejournal vendors.  April 2006 [RTF]
• Metadata requirements for OpenURLs sent to the CDL SFX server, UC-eLinks. The set of data elements that must appear in the OpenURL.  June 2006 [PDF]
• Linking requirements for publishers: Methods used to link to full content on the vendor site.  May 2003 [RTF]
• User interface principles for vendors: Characteristics of a quality user interface.  June 2003 [RTF]
• Ebook Task Force report: The Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections (JSC) Ebook Task Force issued a report defining operating guidelines and desirable features that will make ebooks most useful for instruction and research at the UC.
• Executive Summary [PDF]
• Report [PDF]
• Appendix Table of Contents [PDF]

Information for vendors:

• Linking to Melvyl® Catalog holdings: Describes how to compose URLs to retrieve holdings information from the Melvyl Catalog database. May 2003. [RTF]
• Obtaining the current UC systemwide IP address list: Explains how to get the most current list of UC systemwide IP addresses. [HTML]
• Using CDL graphics: The UC-eLinks graphic (OpenURL/SFX) [GIF] and CDL logo graphic [GIF] may be used on vendor web sites.

Guidelines for meeting Americans with Disabilities Act requirements:

• The International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI): Provides information about accessible environments, services, and management practices.
• Designing a More Usable World—For All: Includes standards, guidelines, tools, and resources.

UC Enrollment Data

• Year-average full time equivalent (FTE) enrollments: Provides information about UC campus locations and populations. The UC uses year-average FTE populations for licensing electronic products. Please contact the CDL licensing staff if more information is needed. [XLS]

Resource Liaisons

• CDL Resource Liaisons:
The Resource Liaisons are CDL's network of campus subject experts who monitor systemwide licensed resources. Resource Liaisons play a vital role in vendor relations. This document outlines their responsibilities. [HTML]

Contact Information

• CDL collection development and licensing staff: [HTML]
• Technical requirement documents: Holly Eggleston
• Resource Liaison Coordinator: Holly Eggleston