Issue No. 5 Winter 2011

Quarterly Update
OCUL’s quarterly catch-up... read about what’s new at Scholars Portal, announcements from our member libraries and future OCUL plans and initiatives

Scholars Portal Day Recap

Discovery was the theme of Scholars Portal Day 2011, held at the Bluma Appel Salon in the Toronto Reference Library.

Missed it? 
Find out what we discovered and watch a recording of the day or jump directly to highlights:
Scholars Portal LibGuides

Collections Update
Preservation Update
Evaluation Update
Keep in Touch
 

OCUL Fall 2011 Directors' Meeting

Carleton University hosted the Fall 2011 OCUL Directors' Meeting. Read a brief synopsis of what was discussed and where you can find more detailed information.

Comings & Goings

An update on staffing changes at OCUL and Scholars Portal.

 

Preserving Academic Resources

Library of Alexandria
The New Library of Alexandria
Credit: Bibliotheca Alexandria

As the winter term comes to a close, it is rewarding to look back at OCUL’s many accomplishments from the past year. Among them: the approval and implementation of our OCUL Strategic Plan, the launch of 2 new services (Ask a Librarian & Scholars GeoPortal), a redesign of the OCUL website, the creation of new communications tools to support OCUL members (PSAG newsletter) and their students, faculty and researchers (LibGuides).

Also worth noting are the negotiations of new resource deals with increased focus on local loading rights and the inclusion of Canadian and Open Access content, as well as the addition of millions of new e-journal articles and e-books into the shared OCUL digital collection. As of December, our current Scholars Portal holdings are well over 23 million journal articles and more than 375,000 e-books - with a significant increase in our commercial titles.

Considering the wealth of information resources in our care, it is also gratifying to see how far we have come in preparing for the upcoming Trusted Digital Repository audit of our e-journals platform this winter. Ensuring the continued provision and preservation of academic resources essential for teaching, learning and research is a critical focus in the OCUL Strategic Plan.

Scholars Portal staff, supported by the OCUL TDR Steering Committee, have made great progress in creating the policies, documentation and infrastructure necessary to ensure that the materials held in our collections remain: whole and integral, authentic to the original, and accessible for research. For more information, please read our policies.

Once the audit process has been completed for Journals, work will continue to ensure these same rigorous standards of preservation are applied to our Books and Data platforms and to our research repositories including the International Polar Year repository and our new Dataverse pilot.

All of these achievements were made possible through collaborative efforts involving staff at all of our member libraries. I thank you for your continued dedication to creating exceptional learning environments for Ontario’s students. Your hard work has paid off and I hope you will take some time over this holiday season to rest and reflect on all that you have accomplished.

I can’t wait to see what 2012 will bring. Happy Holidays!

Leslie Weir, Chair, OCUL


University Librarian, University of Ottawa


Scholars Portal Day: Discovery

This year’s Scholars Portal Day keynote centered on discovery layers. Keynote Speaker David Lindahl, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Executive Director of the eXtensible Catalog Organization (XCO), spoke about some of the projects his company has been working on including a XC Metadata Services Toolkit which enables the XC user interface to present FRBRized, faceted navigation across a range of library resources.

Also on the topic of discovery, the University of Guelph provided an in-depth and hard-hitting exposé of how discovery layers can help users find the research information they need. (The video is not online but you can contact anyone in the University of Guelph Library to set up a private screening. It's a fun watch!)

Missed it?
You can view the agenda and find links to the Adobe Connect capture on the Scholars Portal Day SPOTDocs wiki page (a SPOTDocs login is required)

The agenda included updates on existing Scholars Portal services as well as presentations on new pilots and initiatives undertaken by OCUL this year including: the Relais Express “print-from-the-web” pilot, MINES survey findings, the OCUL Usage Rights database project, and the bX recommender service pilot. Attendees were also offered introductions to OCUL’s newest services: Ask a Librarian and Scholars GeoPortal.

Updates from the day:

LibGuides
Client Services Librarian Jacqueline Whyte Appleby presented a number of new LibGuides designed to improve the use of our services and to highlight e-resource collections. To date, LibGuides have been created for the following services: RefWorks, WizFolio, ODESI, RACER, Scholars GeoPortal, Scholars Portal Journals and our new pilot Dataverse research repository. Guides were also created to highlight our growing collection of Open Access materials and our ITER Press and Duke University Press E-Books.

Upcoming LibGuide topics include Oxford University Press holdings, an Ask a Librarian reference knowledge base, and Accessibility at Scholars Portal. We are also interested in creating guides that showcase content in co-operation with subject librarians across OCUL.

Explore our LibGuides: guides.scholarsportal.info

Have a topic you’d like to see covered in a LibGuide?  Contact Jacqueline: jacqueline [at] scholarsportal.info

New Resources added to Scholars Portal
Digital Content Production Manager Ravit David and Metadata Librarian Wei Zhao shared news on recent collections loaded onto our Books and Journals platforms.

Books
The Books repository now holds over 375,000 books. This number includes 93,000+ commercial titles and 282,000+ books from the public domain. 2011 saw a 31% increase in the number of commercial titles loaded into the system from publishers including Springer, Oxford, Gibson, Duke, Cambridge and APA. To see a full listing of OCUL eBook holdings please visit the SPOTDocs wiki (a SPOTDocs login is required).

Journals
In 2011 journal packages from Annual Reviews, University of Toronto Press, ICE Archive , Sage Abstracts, Taylor & Francis and BioOne were added to the platform. Upcoming packages scheduled for loading include JSTOR, Thieme, ACM, ASTM.  You can keep track of collections loading on the eJournals SPOTDocs wiki page (a SPOTDocs login is required).

This year OCUL added 19 Open Access journals to the collection. Increasing the number of Open Access journals, particularly those offering Canadian research, has been a priority and a new journal loading agreement for Open Access journals was created to support obtaining local loading rights.

Evaluation
Evaluation and Assessment Librarian Dana Thomas shared findings from the MINES survey including information on resource publisher by discipline, and differences in recommendations from faculty and librarians. You can find these slides in the Scholars Portal Presentation posted on the Scholars Portal Day SPOTDocs wiki page. Dana also discussed the Scholars Portal Usage Database (SPUD) and Serials Collection Overlap Tool (SCOT). SCOT is now available for all OCUL schools to evaluate new acquisitions, cancellations, coverage by subject area and opportunities for weeding collections.

Preservation
Digital Preservation Policy Librarian Stephen Marks provided an update on the documentation and technical work OCUL has undertaken in preparation for a Scholars Portal Journals audit to be conducted by the Center for Research Libraries early in the new year.  Successful completion of the audit will result in Journals being designated the first Trusted Digital Repository in Canada. To see Steve's presentation visit the Scholars Portal Day SPOTDocs wiki page (a SPOTDocs login is required).

Keep in Touch:
Stay in the loop about Scholars Portal service enhancements or issues, new projects, collection updates and other news:


OCUL Fall 2011 Directors' Meeting

The agenda included the Scholars Portal semi-annual report and recommendations including a recommendation for a citation management service review, a presentation of MINES survey findings, and an update on OCUL’s preservation initiatives. OCUL’s standing committees also submitted updates on the progress of their strategic plan initiatives. Here are a few accomplishments taken from the updates:

  • A series of project and service-related webinars for OCUL member libraries. These webinars can be accessed through the Webinar Archive on the new OCUL website: http://www.ocul.on.ca/node/67 (an OCUL account is required to access this page)
  • A new ODESI LibGuide to support users. View the LibGuide here: http://guides.scholarsportal.info/odesi
  • Beta launch of Scholars GeoPortal - a repository of commonly held geospatial and health data in Ontario universities.  The service will launch officially in early 2012. Visit Scholars GeoPortal: http://gis.scholarsportal.info/
  • Compilation of a listing of all known digitization projects related to Ontario government publications


A digest of meetings outcomes, along with reports & presentations submitted for the meeting are available to OCUL member library staff on the OCUL Reports & Digests SPOTDocs wiki page (a SPOTDocs login is required).

Fond Farewells

At the meeting, OCUL acknowledged the dedication and commitment of two OCUL Directors who will be retiring from their university libraries this year: Mike Ridley from the University of Guelph and Nipissing University’s Brian Nettlefold. The Directors also recognized the work of Faye Abrams who retired from her role as OCUL Projects Officer at the end of November.

The Spring Directors meeting will be held May 10th & 11th, 2012 at the University of Waterloo.


Comings & Goings

Faye Abrams
We'll miss you Faye!

OCUL

After spending 12 years with OCUL, Projects Officer Faye Abrams, retired on November 30th. There is no doubt that Faye will be missed by her colleagues in the library and vendor community as she has been the driving force behind consortia licensing for electronic resources across Ontario's 21 university libraries since 1999. From everyone at OCUL, we send our congratulations to Faye and wish her well in her retirement. She has earned it.

OCUL is delighted to welcome Carol Stephenson to the role of OCUL Projects Officer. Carol has been seconded from Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) where she is Head of Collections and Acquisitions. She has served on the OCUL Information Resources Committee for several years, has represented OCUL libraries on the CRKN Negotiating Resource Team, and is a member of both the Springer Library Advisory Board and the Ebsco Advisory Board. Please join us in welcoming Carol to her new position.

Scholars Portal

New to the Scholars Portal team is programmer/analyst Sadia Khwaja. Sadia, who has joined the E-Books team, has a BSc with a specialist in Computer Science Information Systems from the University of Toronto. Sadia's previous work experience includes positions with Oracle Canada and the North York General Hospital. Welcome Sadia.

This month OCUL’s Evaluation and Assessment Librarian Dana Thomas will return to her position at Ryerson University. In her time with OCUL Dana has been instrumental in creating an Evaluation and Assessment process for OCUL initiatives and in building the Scholars Portal Usage Data tool (SPUD), the Serials Collection Overlap Tool (SCOT) and the OCUL Usage Rights (OUR) Database. Thanks Dana for your great work on behalf of OCUL!

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Of Note

Resource Sharing Day
On December 8th, OCUL members gathered at Ryerson University's Oakham House for a day of discussion related to Inter-Library Loan. On the agenda was discussion of the OCUL Relais Express "print-from-the-web" project currently running at 9 OCUL libraries, a talk by Ed Davidson, Product Manager, OCLC Delivery Service, areview of the 12th annual Interlending & Document Supply conference, and a presentation on web-based ILL tool Colombo. To view presentation slides, or to watch a recording of the day, visit the Resource Sharing Day 2011 SPOTDocs wiki page (a SPOTDocs login is required).

OCUL Website User Accounts

The re-designed OCUL website launched in November. OCUL Member staff can now create User Accounts to access our calendar of events, webinar archive and member search, or to find easy access to our OCUL wiki spaces and listservs. A User Account also allows you to update your own personal information in our search listings. You can create a User Account through the login link found in the top right corner of the site, by going directly to the login page: http://www.ocul.on.ca/user/login or by contacting Kerry Kelly: kerry.kelly [at] ocul.on.ca.

Tell Us What you think!
 The new site is a work in progress as we continue to work on our products section and work areas for our committees and groups, but please take some time to visit the new site and share your feedback. Send your comments, suggestions or corrections to Kerry Kelly: kerry.kelly [at] ocul.on.ca (subject: Website%20Feedback)

OCUL @ OLA

If you’re planning to be in Toronto for the OLA Superconference in February, you’ll be able to check out some sessions relating to OCUL and Scholars Portal projects and services:

  • Session 315: Digital Preservation in Academic Libraries: Recent Canadian Initiatives
  • Session 1212: Digital Preservation Our Way: OCUL’S Trusted Digital Repository
  • Session 1015: OCUL’S Geospatial Portal In Action  

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Talk to us! Have a comment or an idea for the Quarterly? Contact Kerry Kelly: kerry.kelly [at] ocul.on.ca