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arl-ereserve: California Digital Library

arl-ereserve: California Digital Library

California Digital Library

Jeff Rosedale (rosedale@columbia.edu)
Mon, 20 Oct 97 10:36:00 EDT 

Date: Mon, 20 Oct 97 10:36:00 EDT
From: Jeff Rosedale <rosedale@columbia.edu>
To: arl-ereserve@arl.org
Subject: California Digital Library
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.4.877358160.rosedale@ciao.cc.columbia.edu>


Any comments from UC folks about impact this might have on planning for
electronic reserves at your campuses?

Jeff Rosedale				  Acting Head of Access, Butler Library
Phone 212-854-8758         FAX 212-854-3443  	    Email rosedale@columbia.edu
535 W 114th Street, 410 Butler Library, MC1124, Columbia University NY NY 10027

                ---------------

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
           Wednesday, October 15, 1997

           University of California System
           Announces a 'Library Without Walls'

           By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

The University of California system announced Tuesday that it
would create a new library whose collections would be available
entirely on line. 

The California Digital Library, as the new library will be called, will
coordinate electronic-archiving projects on the system's nine
campuses and will create a central data base of electronic
materials that researchers can use from their own computers. 

"Today we announce the creation of U.C.'s library without walls,"
said Richard C. Atkinson, the University of California's president,
in a statement issued Tuesday. 

Because of copyright issues, only faculty members, administrators,
and students on University of California campuses will be
permitted to use some of the new library's materials. But many
documents, photographs, and other materials owned by the
university system will be made available to the public in electronic
form. 

The new library's staff faces a series of difficult policy issues
common to electronic-publishing enterprises. Those issues include
licensing existing data bases; establishing procedures for archiving
digital materials; developing technical standards for electronic
documents; and providing technical support for patrons of virtual
collections. 

The digital library's first librarian, Richard E. Lucier, said in an
interview Tuesday that the library planned to focus first on building
a collection of materials related to science, technology, and
industry. Although no specific timetable has been set, Mr. Lucier
said that some parts of the digital library would open within the
current academic year. "We intend to move as quickly as
possible," he added. Mr. Lucier has been the university librarian at
the University of California at San Francisco. 

Mr. Lucier said an additional goal of the library would be to
encourage University of California professors to publish their
research on line, a practice that would allow the library to add
those papers to its collections almost instantly. "We would like to
change the way information is disseminated for scholarship," he
said. 

Individual libraries in the university system have been working for
years to convert documents, books, photographs, maps, and other
materials to digital form. The University of California at Berkeley,
for instance, has put many historical photos of the state on a
World-Wide Web site. The University of California at Santa
Barbara has converted a large map collection to digital form. And
the University of California at Riverside's California Museum of
Photography offers on-line exhibitions of its holdings. 

By better coordinating those efforts, officials hope to make the
various collections even more accessible and useful. 

The university system is spending $1-million this year to start the
library, and it has requested $3-million in next year's state budget
to support it.

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