Since the last edition of curlnews, the Board has met on 14 May.
e-Research
Professor Tony Hey gave a presentation about e-science to the Board. Professor Hey said he very much welcomed a dialogue between researchers and the information community on this issue and agreed to participate in the next CURL Members’ meeting, due to take place in London on 13 October 04. The meeting will concentrate on the contribution librarians and other information professionals could and should make in the area of e-research.
Collaboration with the Research Libraries Group (RLG)
In the light of a partnership offer by RLG, the Board decided that MIMAS would be asked to take part in an evaluation of RLG’s new RLIN21 interface, to see whether it could be adapted to the CURL MARC21 database. The evaluation will take place between August and October 04, and will start with a technology transfer meeting in California between MIMAS and RLG technical staff.
It was hoped that this particular partnership opportunity would pave the way to a higher-level common agenda between CURL and RLG, and in this vein the possibility of a future annual meeting between CURL Board members and RLG senior staff was discussed.
Regarding the uploading of CURL records into the RLG database, the Board agreed that it was up to each Member to decide whether or not to contribute its records to the RLG (or any other database). If a member wishes to contribute its records to the RLG database, arrangements for doing so should be made directly between the Member and RLG, rather than through MIMAS
The Board also received a presentation from Nancy Elkington, RLG Manager, Member Services, on the new RLG membership dues structure.
Board membership
Jan Wilkinson will take up her new position as Head of Higher Education at the British Library on 05 July, and will thereafter be stepping down as a member of the Board. Jan will continue to be committed and heavily involved in CURL work through her ongoing membership of the Resource Management Task Force, the Monograph Inter-lending Steering Group, as well as the RLN Task Force.
The Board received and accepted an application for CURL membership from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The Wellcome Trust, which has been an Associate Member since 1997, will become a full member as of 01 August 2004.
Dates of Board meetings, 03-04
Dates are available at http://www.curl.ac.uk/about/Meetingdates.html .
Members’ Meeting
The next Members’ Meeting is scheduled for October 13, and will be held in London. The theme of this year’s autumn meeting will be eResearch, thus following up the discussions on this theme that took place at the April Members Meeting in Dublin.
The 2005 Annual General Meeting and Members’ meeting will take place in Newcastle on 16-17 March 2005.
Web Interface
As reported under the item on the Board above, MIMAS staff on CURL’s behalf will be travelling to RLG’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, to discuss technology transfer opportunities between the two organisations. The trip will take place in early August. In preparation for this visit, MIMAS staff need to get as much feedback from CURL cataloguing staff as possible on the functionality and capabilities of the new RLIN21 interface. A scope of views on the CURL-cats mailing list has been initiated, and CURL staff who have been responsible for rolling out and testing this replacement for RLIN are encouraged to send their views to the CURL-cats mailing list by 21 July. In general, MIMAS needs information on the following:
MARC21 Database
The latest (July 04) figures on the population of the CURL MARC21 database now stand at 17.5 million records of the approximately 40 million records of the entire CURL database. These account for the catalogues of the following CURL libraries and Library of Congress files: Cambridge, Durham, Glasgow, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine Library, University of Leeds Library, National Library of Scotland, Trinity College Dublin; Library of Congress Books All, and Library of Congress CJK.
Full details on MARC21 database development and on the targets for both accessing it and testing the deduplication mechanism can be found at:
Clustering: test Z39.50 target
The test clustering target released in March has grown from 170,000 accessible records to some 17 million. There is now much more scope for performance testing the de-duplication process as the MARC21 database grows beneath this new target.
New hardware for CURL and COPAC databases
MIMAS will be moving the CURL and COPAC databases to new Sun hardware during the second half of 2004. Replacement of the existing equipment has been funded by the JISC. Performance of both CURL record retrieval and COPAC record discovery is expected to improve considerably as a result of the migration.
COPAC
Since the last issue of curlnews, there has been the following COPAC activity:
The COPAC service has been awarded a certificate of excellence for a website that is accessible to people with disabilities. COPAC was one of only 5 web sites from the 1000 tested by the Centre for HCI design at City University that received a commendation for its ease of use by people with disabilities. It was noted that those sites that proved most accessible were also those that proved easiest to use by non-disabled users.
The ethos underlying COPAC has always been one of surface simplicity to support ease of use by all researchers and accessibility for users with disabilities has been one element of this general concern with usability. Further developments are planned to enhance COPAC accessibility, ensuring the service is available to the widest possible range of searchers. The full report is available from: http://hcid.soi.city.ac.uk/index.html
Newcastle reload complete
The reload of the University of Newcastle Library catalogue was completed in May. This was carried out in response to major local library system changes at Newcastle.
Live holdings information for Newcastle and UCL
MIMAS have made available live holdings information for materials held by UCL (University College London). In addition, the completion of the reload of the Newcastle catalogue has allowed us to reinstate the live holdings information for this library. This means that when you view the Local Holdings display for these libraries you can see details of all the copies of a document, where they are held, whether any copies are on loan and, if so, when they are due back. This brings to 19 the number of libraries for which live holdings information is available.
School of Advanced Study (SAS) catalogue reload complete
MIMAS completed the reloading of the catalogue of the School of Advanced Study (SAS) Libraries on 21 June. Live local holdings information is available for this group of libraries. Amongst other things this will tell you which of the SAS libraries actually holds a document and whether it is currently on loan
Archives Hub
By mid-June there were 17,195 descriptions in the Archives Hub. The upgrade of the spokes at Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester is now complete, and the concentration is now on the central hub software. Testing of the spokes and the central hub together should begin in July, and new hardware is expected to be in place at MIMAS for the Archives Hub service by the end of July. Once all the software components and the new hardware have been tested, the switch will be made to the Distributed Version of the Archives Hub. The new developer team at the University of Liverpool, Clare Llewellyn and John Harrison, who are dedicated to the implementation of the Distributed Version, has worked hard to bring this aspect of the service ahead of schedule.
Britain in Print
The application for Phase Two of Britain in Print was submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund on 30 June 04. This is a proposal for a cross-sectoral project involving HE, public and other libraries, that includes an e-learning component as well as a targeted programme of retrospective conversion. It is hoped that the outcome of the bid will be announced this autumn.
Revelation Plus Extra
Following the successful completion of Revelation Plus, CURL has submitted a bid to this year’s Full Disclosure call, entitled “Revelation Plus Extra”, in collaboration with the Cathedral Libraries and Archives Association. The bid is based on a cross-sectoral partnership between CURL institutions, members of the Cathedral Libraries and Archives Association and other research libraries that possess significant research collections in 19th and 20th century church history and Christian theology. The outcome of the bid will be announced in August 04.
The Task Force last met on 07 May 04.
After extended consultation with CURL staff, the Task Force composed and recommended a Communications Policy for CURL, which will be submitted to the Board on 16 July 04. The policy covers improving and enhancing communications with members, between the Board and CURL’s task forces, as well as between CURL and its domestic and international partners.
Work is ongoing on the CURL web site to prepare it for handover to an external consultant for redesigning by the new academic year. As well as enhancing the visual aspects of the site, the site will be underpinned by a content management system.
Task Force on Company Business
The Task Force last met on 07 May 04.
The Task Force reviewed the changes to the Memorandum and Articles of Association made by the solicitors, with a view to making recommendations to the Board at its meeting on 14 May 04.
The Task Force also reviewed the work to evaluate the possibility and feasibility of a further marketing strategy for the CURL record retrieval database, in the light of the comments made by the Members at their April 04 meeting. This issue was put to the Board of 14 May, where it was decided not to pursue the idea of a subsidiary trading company for CURL
Task Force on Digital Content Creation and Curation
The TF has not met since the last edition of curlnews.
The Task Force will be the point of organisation for CURL of a joint CURL-DPC information and best practice sharing event on digital preservation for practitioners in CURL libraries and beyond in October. The venue will be the British Library, and more information on speakers and the programme will be disseminated nearer the time.
Digital Resource Management Sub-Group
The sub-group last met on 27 May.
The group has produced a ‘Feature and Functionality’ questionnaire for software vendors of digital preservation systems, which is currently being distributed to selected commercial and open-source suppliers. The collated vendor responses on the varying functionalities of these systems will be made available to practitioners in CURL and to the wider community via the CURL web site, to aid future decision-making on system implementation. The group is also preparing a paper on the LOCKSS system, and how this could be utilized for digital preservation activity. Other ongoing work includes setting out a file format registry and advice on future file support; mapping the life-cycle of digital preservation activity and putting forward a model for best practice, as well as publishing a definitive list of existing preservation services, in conjunction with the work done by the DPC on its Institutional Survey. In all these aspects of the work of the sub-group, CURL’s partners at the AHDS, the DPC, and the National Archives are deeply involved.
Task Force on the Research Libraries Network (RLN)
The Task Force last met on 14 May.
The Task Force finalised a first draft of the CURL Position Paper, for submission to the next meeting of the CURL Board on 16 July 04. The aim of the Position Paper is to identify areas of CURL activity that might have synergy with the goals of the RLN, as suggested by the RSLG Report. These areas include, in particular: the UK National Catalogue, monograph inter-lending, collaborative collection management, digital content creation and curation and open access repositories.
Task Force on Resource Discovery
The Task Force held a teleconference on 21 May, in order to set the parameters for the group’s Remit and Smart Objectives. There was also a high-level discussion on the current resource discovery landscape and as to how CURL can contribute to the shaping of that landscape in the future and instigate new resource discovery resources for researchers, taking into consideration the success of such extant CURL-related services as COPAC and the Archives Hub.
Task Force on Resource Management
The Task Force has not met since the last issue of curlnews.
The Task Force has been concentrating on the CoFoR project; see below for details of this project
Task Force on Scholarly Communications
The Task Force last met on 05 May 04.
The Task Force has now been granted the funding to go ahead with the second round of its advocacy campaign to raise awareness amongst academics of a number of issues, including the benefits to the research community of making their research output available through open access initiatives. Other work that the Task Force is involved in or liaising with includes possible collaboration between SHERPA and Elsevier; an analysis of academics’ use of Science Direct; and the British Library’s project on digital signatures.
The CURL-RLG deal for 04-05 has now been reviewed by the RD&D and will be submitted to the Board at its meeting on 16 July 04.
A group services proposal was presented by OCLC to the RD&D on 15 June. It offered a subscription-based approach to extending the use of OCLC services potentially to all CURL members. These services included FirstSearch, Metadata Services, and ILL services. The RD&D has recommended wider consultation with the membership as a first stage in the response to OCLC.
CURL-CoFoR Project
An overwhelming majority of partner institutions, eighteen in all, have signed the Ten-year Partnership Agreement. Work is now underway to finalise the toolkit of documentation and procedures to support the extension of collaborative resource sharing to other fields, as well as an exit strategy document, which will be submitted to the Board at its meeting on 16 July 04.
Work is also underway to add the Russian and East European Studies holdings of 5 non-CURL CoFoR partners to COPAC for resource discovery. The partners in question are: Scott Polar Research Institute, The University of Bradford, the University of Essex, The Polish Library and the Royal Institute for International Affairs.
Monograph Inter-lending Project
Jill Evans took up her post as Project Manager of the CURL-BL Monograph Inter-lending Project on 17 May 04. Jill has been seconded on the project for one year by the National Library of Scotland, where she was Deputy Manager of the Inter-Library Services.
A new mailing list has been set up in order to further and promote the work being done by the recently appointed Monograph Inter-lending project manager, Jill Evans. To join the list (MIL@JISCMAIL.AC.UK), send a message to Joy West (j.a.west@curl.ac.uk).
For this edition, we have news from several CURL members, as well as from the Arts and Humanities Data Service, which has recently become involved in the work of CURL through membership of the Digital Resource Management sub-group
News from University of Birmingham Information Services
Research Libraries Group (RLG)
Information Services hosted the CURL/ RLG Technical Services Forum for the RLG on 19th April 2004, which was held in the University’s Learning Centre. Twenty-two representatives from UK national and academic libraries attended the forum, which is held every two years.
Karen Smith-Yoshimura and Robin Dougherty attended from RLG. Karen, who is based in RLG’s headquarters in California, introduced details of the new interface to their RLIN database for cataloguers, and gave a presentation on the RLG RedLightGreen project, which aims to provide an easy-to-use interface to the database for library users, especially students.
Robin Dougherty said: “The University of Birmingham certainly was a wonderful site to hold the RLG forum for CURL members, and we're grateful for all of the support given.”
Michele Shoebridge, Director of Information Services, said:” I am delighted that RLG chose the University of Birmingham to host the forum this year. This has given us the opportunity to demonstrate our resources and to share knowledge with colleagues within CURL and RLG”.
Information down under
Information Services hosted a visit by Rhonda Langford, Physical Sciences Librarian at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
The University of Birmingham is a founding member of Universitas 21 (U21), a network of eighteen research intensive universities around the world. Information Services is a member of the IS Group that meets annually and is involved in a number of other initiatives including the U21Globla venture to develop and deliver courses to the global online learning market.
Rhonda visited the University as part of a Universitas 21 (U21) Fellowship Project. Her project focuses on creating and sustaining major research libraries for the 21st century. As part of her fellowship, Rhonda also visited Hong Kong, Nottingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities.
During her visit to the University of Birmingham, Rhonda met with Michele Shoebridge, Director of Information Services, for an overview of the structure and operation of Information Services at the University; Fiona Parsons, Assistant Director of Public Services and Charlotte Jarvis, Assistant Director of Planning and Administration.
Rhonda also met with other key staff to share knowledge and best practice. These included staff from various teams, in particular: Academic Liaison & Collection Development; Centre for Education Technology & Distance Learning; the Learning Development Unit; Library Services and Corporate Web Team. She also met with staff from other universities.
Michele Shoebridge said: “U21 allows the University and Information Services to share knowledge and best practice; it has been very useful to meet with Rhonda and to exchange information on our two different services.”
Rhonda presented an awareness session for Information Services staff, providing a background to the University NSW, her role, an outline of her project and the Universities she has yet to visit.
Institutional Portal
Information Services is involved in implementing the first phase of an institutional portal, which will involve rolling out a student portal. We have purchased two products from SCT to assist us in this – Luminus and one of their self-service modules. The portal, via a customised desktop, will act as the primary access point to a wide range of new and existing services.
Digital Library
The autumn term sees a new generation of our library catalogue. We will also be implementing Talis Prism. The Digital Library is a rolling programme of projects that will deliver new library services like Talis Prism, and integrate these and existing services into the web-enabled campus through the institutional Portal. The result will be flexible services available anytime anywhere.
e-Science
Information Services is a partner in the Midlands e-Science Centre (MeSC), one of seven newly established centres of excellence to augment the existing national and regional e-Science Centres. The brief of the e-Science Centres is developing Grid technology and functionality on behalf of UK on a national and regional level. The purpose of the centre is to; add regional coverage to the existing UK e-Science Grid; add experience and resources to the existing UK e-Science Grid; add and co-ordinate expertise in technologies and applications important to e-Science and to host Access Grid nodes for multi-site remote conferencing.
The MeSC is a virtual centre focusing on modelling and analysis of large complex systems. Its uniquely distinguishing aspect is the focus on long term research in developing effective algorithms and software technology for the Grid and their application to complex problems leading to scientific advancement or industrial benefit. To facilitate this research, a 102-processor Grid cluster and 1 Terabyte of storage has recently been ordered from Hewlett-Packard, strengthening the link between the company and the University. Joint research projects are now planned. The cluster, which requires a 75 amp power supply and hence generates 18 Kwatts of heat, will be housed in the Information Services machine room and managed by staff from ICSD.
In conjunction with the MeSC Information Services are in the process of procuring and installing a second Access Grid node for the MeSC, in addition to the one that Information Services has installed in the HP Visual and Spatial Technology Centre. Unlike traditional one to one video conferencing, the Access Grid nodes enable simultaneous conferences with many other sites in the world. For more information on the Centre visit www.mesc.bham.ac.uk/. We are also going to debate which role the research library has in the e-Science agenda, with a view to creating projects that will explore this.
News from Cambridge University Library
Donations to support historic scientific manuscripts and American studies
Historic Scientific Manuscripts
The University Library has one of the most important collections of scientific manuscripts and books in the world. It contains most of the surviving scientific papers of two of the most celebrated scientists of all time, Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, as well as the papers of other Cambridge scientists such as James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, J.J. Thomson, Lord Rutherford and George Gabriel Stokes.
Below you can read of the successful outcome of negotiations over the future of the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) archival collections. The financial settlement transferring permanent responsibility for this collection to the University Library, together with a most generous donation of almost $800,000 from an anonymous benefactor, have allowed us to create a new post of Curator of Historic Scientific Manuscripts with effect from 1 April. The post has been filled by Adam Perkins, who up to now has been Archivist of the RGO.
Mr Perkins’ priorities will be to continue to supervise the cataloguing and digitisation of the Macclesfield Collection of Newton papers, acquired in 2000, to accelerate the work of cataloguing the RGO archive, and to support readers in their use of these materials.
American studies
In 1999 the Library received a donation from Dr Mark Kaplanoff, Fellow of Pembroke, to create a temporary post to build up the American studies collections, principally in the history of the United States. The following year Dr Kaplanoff died suddenly, leaving a bequest of over a million dollars to the University Library to buy materials for the support of American studies. This bequest has been used to create the Kaplanoff Fund, the income from which will be available for the purchase of American studies materials on a permanent basis. Dr Kaplanoff’s original donation runs out in April and the Library has been able to create a new post which will enable us to make the most effective use of the bequest, by having an American studies specialist available to select and purchase materials from the Kaplanoff Fund. The new post will be filled from 1 May by Jayne Hoare, a graduate of Birmingham University in American Studies and English. Her role is to improve coverage by selecting more books for purchase, especially in those areas of research interest to members of the University working in a number of different faculties and departments. She will seek to maintain the existing strengths, whilst focusing on building the collection in all areas of US business history, contemporary politics and economics, gender politics, Canadian history, and twentieth century US foreign policies.
Questions on the collection can be addressed to Jane Hoare (jeh44@cam.ac.uk or telephone 01233 33102).
A permanent home for the Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives
Fourteen years after the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) archival collection came on deposit to the University Library, an agreement has now been reached between the Library and the body previously responsible for the records, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, for the deposit to become permanent. This is a most significant development because the move ensures the safe future of the collection in a modern purpose-constructed strong room with all the Library’s attendant facilities to support the collection and its readers.
About a third of the papers in the archive date back to the Greenwich era, 1675-1948. Such was the expansion of the work at Herstmonceux, however, with many more staff working in new departments that the bulk of the papers date from the second half of the 20th century, after the Greenwich centuries. Even during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the purely ‘Greenwich papers’ were diluted when records of other bodies, such as the Board of Longitude (1714-1828) and the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, founded in 1820, were taken into the Greenwich record. Providing a secure home for records that might otherwise have vanished for want of proper care has been a characteristic of the management of the collection over the centuries, the archives acting as a benevolent ‘black hole’ to accrete more and more related, but not directly associated, material into the whole. With the RGO archives having provided proper care for other collections over the centuries, it is appropriate that the University Library is now ensuring that the RGO collection itself is preserved and made available to users in a fitting location.
News from Glasgow University Library
DAEDALUS Project launch Glasgow ePrints Service
The DAEDALUS Project recently held a successful public launch of the University of Glasgow ePrints service. DAEDALUS is funded under the JISC Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme, and is concerned with building institutional repositories for Glasgow and informing staff on issues relating to scholarly communications and open access. The ePrints service holds scholarly research material produced by members of the University, and was build using the ePrints software. Material in the service can be searched locally, and is also being harvested by OAI harvesters such as OAIster and search engines such as Yahoo and Google. Preliminary statistics reveal that the papers in the service are attracting high levels of access. The launch event was attended by academic staff from a wide range of departments, and is part of an ongoing programme of advocacy events and publications which are aimed at encouraging staff to contribute content to the service. A new leaflet advertising the service is available at http://www.lib.gla.ac.uk/daedalus/docs/eprintsleaflet.pdf
The World of Chaucer: medieval books and manuscripts from Glasgow University Library
Currently on view at Glasgow University's Hunterian Museum, this major exhibition showcases over thirty medieval manuscripts and early printed books from the rich holdings of Glasgow University Library's Special Collections. Focusing on the works of Chaucer and his contemporaries, the medieval books on display explore the world of the late Middle Ages. The star exhibit is Glasgow’s unique fifteenth-century illuminated copy of Chaucer’s courtly love poem ‘The Romaunt of the Rose’.
The exhibition has been mounted to coincide with the major international conference of the ‘New Chaucer Society’ being hosted by Glasgow University in July. However, it also provides a rare opportunity for the general public to view some of the most significant, unique and beautiful artefacts in our keeping, normally only available to scholars and researchers. The exhibition is on display in the Hunter Room of the Hunterian Museum until 28 August 2004; for those unable to make a visit in person, the exhibition website and on-line catalogue is available at: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/chaucer/index.html
Moira Sinclair
M.Sinclair@lib.gla.ac.uk
News from the Arts and Humanities Data Service
Visual Arts Image Collections now online - AHDS Visual Arts
AHDS Visual Arts has recently added four new image collections to its catalogue of high quality online resources. The collections feature a range of visual arts subject areas including painting, textiles, crafts, printmaking and photography.
20th Century and contemporary British crafts from ceramics and calligraphy to printed and woven textiles. This collection also features archive items such as diaries, correspondence and photographs.
Leading makers such as Bernard Leach, Ethel Mairet, Mary Restieaux, Edward Johnston, Anne Heckle, Edward Barnsley and Tom Perkins are all represented.
(full case study http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/CaseStudy.pdf)
This collection is a result of a case study commissioned by the Fine Art Project http://fineart.ac.uk. It looks at the direct digital capture of student work as a way of retaining a record of alumni output, for posterity and teaching & learning purposes. The collection features staff and student installation, performance, video, print/digital imaging as well as painting and sculpture from the Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College.
http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/LCFWOOL.html
Wool fashions from the 1940s to 1970s as documented by the the International Wool Secretariat (now The Woolmark Company). The images capture both the fashion of the time and the style of photography. Many of the images are accompanied by a press release reflecting the promotional style and language of the time.
http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/index.html
Collection of nearly 150 images by renowned Irish printmaker, Tim Mara. Mara worked almost exclusively in print, and in particular, the field of photographic screen-printing. Innovative and experimental in technique, Mara’s pieces date from the early 1970s until his death in 1997, at which time he was an art practitioner and Professor of Printmaking at the Royal College of Art.
These collections are in addition to over 23,000 high-quality images available for educational use at AHDS Visual Arts.
Search the AHDS Visual Arts catalogue at http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/
curlnews 15 will be published on Thursday, 30 September 04. Contact the curlnews editor, with your views and contributions, by Thursday, 23 September 04