[BOAI] UC News-California Digital Library (CDL) services: expansively global, deeply local

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from the U of California.  --Peter Suber.]


 To view online:
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/24482<http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/XXXXX>

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010
Contact: Ellen Meltzer
Phone: (510) 987-9214
Email: ellen.meltzer at ucop.edu

*California Digital Library (CDL) services: expansively global, deeply local
*

The California Digital Library’s (CDL; http://www.cdlib.org/) success in
elevating the digital library to be expansively global and deeply local has
been demonstrated this fall  in its launching of an array of pioneering
resources that support activities in all corners of research and
scholarship.

*Easier searching of digitized books*

The University of California has reached a significant milestone in
digitizing over 3 million volumes from its libraries’ collections.



 “In lean budget times, the UC libraries have made remarkable progress in
getting our legacy print collections digitized,” said UC Berkeley University
Librarian Thomas Leonard.  “Search engines, especially Google, have funded
this, and non-profits have also offered essential help. At every level of
our library we have taken advantage of this opportunity at a pace that, only
a few years ago, would have seemed impossible... Pooling our efforts with
other universities in the U.S., we have together reached the 7 million mark
for volumes digitized.  This greater digital library represents a line of
volumes stretching from San Francisco to Sacramento.”

These digitized works are also available via a national consortial
partnership: the HathiTrust (http://www.hathitrust.org/), which contains
collections from libraries digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, and
other projects.  To make the University of California’s digitized books more
visible and to build services to support scholars across partner
institutions, CDL’s mass digitization team (
http://www.cdlib.org/services/collections/massdig/) has created an array of
HathiTrust search boxes (http://www.hathitrust.org/widgets).  These tools
make it possible to search the digitized collections in the HathiTrust
directly from web pages, blogs, learning management systems and more.

In another initiative, CDL’s discovery and delivery (
http://www.cdlib.org/services/d2d/) group has created a way to link to
HathiTrust digital resources using SFX with the broader HathiTrust partner
community.  HathiTrust partner libraries that use Ex Libris’ SFX scholarly
linking and implement the new target will be able to include a link to
HathiTrust books in their SFX menu window.  The result is that UC library
users will be able to see immediately whether a HathiTrust book is available
electronically and if so, link to the full text in the HathiTrust Digital
Library.

*Local History Mapped*

Students, teachers, and people interested in California history can explore
an exciting new feature called Local History Mapped on Calisphere (
http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/), the CDL’s free website
of primary sources. A project of Digital Special Collections (
http://www.cdlib.org/services/dsc/), Local History Mapped showcases hundreds
of historical images on five maps of the state, along with current views of
the same locations (http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/mapped/).
Associated with each map is a selection of images and a historical essay
with background on a theme.  A “teacher’s toolbox” is also provided to help
K-12 educators incorporate the maps into lesson plans and class activities.




"The mapping feature is wonderful," said San Francisco volunteer-teacher
Tammy McMillen. "I am working on a unit on bridges for 2nd and 3rd graders.
They will be building and studying them. I love the idea of taking the kids
to the library, where we have 20 computers, to let them explore the theme of
transportation in California using the online maps.  There are some great
photos of bridges that will really augment the lesson."

Calisphere includes more than 200,000 images and text from library, archive
and museum collections across California.

*A powerful access platform*

In September, CDL’s publishing group (
http://www.cdlib.org/services/publishing) launched the eXtensible Text
Framework (XTF) website (http://xtf.cdlib.org/<http://xtf.cdlib.org/),making>)
making this service all the more accessible.  XTF is an open source platform
for institutions and individuals to provide access to digital content.  It
is used as the primary access technology for the CDL’s digital
collections—including eScholarship and the Online Archive of California—and
projects worldwide like The Encyclopedia of Chicago and Indiana University’s
The Chymistry of Isaac Newton.



 “For the Digital Library of Georgia, XTF is the tool of choice for
indexing, searching, and displaying text-based resources,” said P. Toby
Graham, deputy university librarian and director, Hargrett Rare Book &
Manuscript Library director. “The Digital Library of Georgia delivers
400,000 pages of historical newspapers via XTF. We have customized XTF
databases to connect users to digital collections of historical maps, state
publications, original documents, and historical broadsides…. XTF is highly
versatile, robust, and with features like faceted browsing of search results
it meets visitors' expectations for usability. The CDL's ongoing development
and support of XTF is a great service to the digital library community.”



XTF’s high degree of extensibility and performance, even for large documents
and collections, frees implementers to focus on building sophisticated
interfaces for their digital object collections.



A tutorial for XTF is available:
http://xtf.cdlib.org/getting-started-tutorials/

*New digital curation tools*

Another CDL group, the University of California Curation Center (
http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/), also launched several new resources
this fall.  These include Merritt EZID, JHOVE2, and Data Management
Guidelines.  Merritt, a nod to CDL’s neighbor, Lake Merritt, (
http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/merritt/), is a tool for members of the UC
community to manage, archive and share their content safely, persistently
and for the long term.  EZID (pronounced “ee-zee-eye-dee”) (
http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/ezid/index.html) provides researchers a
way to persistently identify and access a scholar’s research, including
datasets, which is critical to the long-term distribution and availability
of the work. JHOVE2 (https://confluence.ucop.edu/display/JHOVE2Info/Home) is
improved software for those managing digital repositories.  Finally, UC
Curation Center has created a detailed description of best practices for
managing and sharing data and meeting funding agency requirements (
http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/datamanagement/). UC campus colleagues
have also contributed to the enhancements of these tools.  Combined, these
services allow researchers to deposit, save, share and discover their
content and data.

These innovative CDL initiatives advance the ability of students, faculty,
and teachers at UC and beyond to engage in work across the research
spectrum.
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