California Digital Library Opens

[John Ober]

Members of the Web4lib list may be interested in the following announcement
about the public opening of the California Digital Library. Please forgive
duplicate postings.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, January 19, 1999

CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY OPENS

The California Digital Library (CDL) opens its public "digital doors"
January 20, 1999 by making available an integrated web gateway to digital
collections, services and tools at http://www.cdlib.org.

When launching CDL's organization in October 1997, University of California
President Richard Atkinson described the electronic library as the
beginning of "a future when our libraries, at the press of a button, can
come to us, wherever we are, whenever we wish." 

Complementing the physical libraries on the nine campuses of the University
of California system, the CDL focuses on selecting, building, managing,
preserving, and providing access to shared collections of high-quality
digital materials for the University and its partners.

Browsing and searching tools at the website provide enhanced access to more
than 2,000 electronic journals from major scholarly publishers and
information providers such as the Web of Science, JSTOR, the American
Chemical Society, Highwire Press, the Association for Computing Machinery,
Academic Press, Elsevier, Springer, Kluwer, and many more.

More than 3,000 inventories or "finding aids" for special and archival
collections throughout the state are also represented, along with dozens of
journal abstracting and indexing databases as well as reference databases. 

Through its "Directory of Collections and Services" the new CDL website
provides a single point of entry for access to these collections. It
complements the Melvyl® Union Catalog of UC-owned print and non-print
material, as well as campus-based catalogs and websites, by directing
patrons to a catalog or database search or directly to electronic journals,
finding aids, and other digital material.

The directory is designed to be collaboratively maintained by staff across
the UC system and to allow a "local view" of available digital resources at
the user's choice. Specific views, including subject-based views, can also
be created for a particular "entrance" to UC shared collections.

Using the CDL, a patron using a computer with access to the Internet can
digitally discover and view a variety of scholarly information resources.

For example, the patron could discover the latest books acquired by UC in
mechanical engineering. 

With a few more mouse clicks, the patron could find a journal on technology
and culture, and in many cases link to its full contents. 

Finally, the same patron in just a few seconds could view an inventory and
selected digitized photos of the Golden Gate Bridge in a collection of
construction photographs held by the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

The CDL and its partner libraries on each University of California campus
are also using digital technologies to enhance sharing of the university's
30-million volume print collection.

Debuting with the CDL website is "Request," a new service for UC faculty,
graduate students, and staff to request material located anywhere in the
nine-campus university system. Authorized users will be able to request
materials with a simple click of a web "Request" button.

Led by University Librarian Richard Lucier, the CDL not only operates in
close collaboration with the UC campuses and their libraries -- it is often
described as a "co-library" -- but also collaborates with other California
universities and organizations to create and extend access to digital
material to UC partners and to the public at large.

The Melvyl Union Catalog, the California Periodicals database which lists
863,000 unique titles held in more than 555 libraries, and the Online
Archive Of California are freely available to any visitor to the CDL. 

The CDL is also collaborating with the California State Library to build
the Library of California, a digitally constructed library that could
eventually link all of the state's public, private, school, and academic
libraries -- as well as many of its museums and think tanks -- into one of
the world's largest electronic information-sharing networks. 

"The University of California stands ready to help bring together the
talents and resources of the state's colleges and universities and our
public libraries with the entrepreneurial energies of the private sector to
build these links for sharing information," said President Atkinson.

In addition to building these shared collections and services, the CDL
plans to apply digital technologies to directly support the university's
faculty as they develop new ways to disseminate their scholarship.

More information can be found at http://www.cdlib.org/. 

# # #
For additional information on the CDL, please call John Ober, CDL Assistant
Director for Education & Communication, (510) 987-0425; or contact him by
email at John.Ober at ucop.edu. 

Additional information about the California Digital Library may be found at
the CDL website, http://www.cdlib.org.

For information about other UC technology innovations, contact Terry
Colvin, Senior Public Information Representative in the UC Office of the
President at (510) 987-9198; or contact him by email at terry.colvin at ucop.edu.