Report to the Library

1
DLIG

• Report to the Library
• June 5, 2001

2
DLIG Final Report

• In our final report for this fiscal year, we hope
  to share with you some of the highlights,
  learnings and good (and eventful) times weve had
  along with our projects

Little Cowpuncher
Fred Harvey Project
The Southwest Thesaurus
The Tree of Life
3
Meetings! Why must I attend more meetings?
MCA 1
Defining our Digital Future

• Progress Since Last Report
• A second dialog was held on April 3.
• Recommendations have been drafted and will soon
  be shared with the Library. The end date for this
  project will be June 30.
• DLIG was dis-charged from defining the UA Digital
  Library by the COLA process.

A DLIG highlight was definitely Karens
University Staff Award. Photos in the remainder
of the report are from the poster made for that
event. Isnt this a fabulous dress?!!?!
4
MCA 3
Creating Digital Content and Access Tools

• Electronic Reserves
• We have improved the usability of the staff
  interface by creating forms and scripts that work
  better with current e-reserves workflow. Staff
  can now add an entire course's pdf links for all
  of the course's articles in one step, as opposed
  to one article at a time.
• We experienced interoperability problems with
  POLIS as we moved into the Summer sessions. POLIS
  was sending us bad semester information, which
  was causing classes not to appear correctly. We
  augmented our code to catch these 'bad'
  semesters, so that we would not have to continue
  to correct courses by hand.
• We are continuing to work with staff from CCIT to
  link e-reserves in a seamless way with a variety
  of campus systems, such as Web-CT and other
  teaching / learning tools.

Karen Williams Always a Fashion Leader
5
MCA 3
Creating Digital Content and Access Tools, cont.
Doing this project over again put Karen right to
sleep! Sleep well, Karen!

• Little Cowpuncher
• Students are trained to new format
• We have adopted a css for the collection of
  documents
• We are altering the file structure of the
  collection of documents
• We are re-doing the format to generate a greater
  facsimile of the original appearance
• (url of previous format digital.library.arizo
  na.edu/cowpuncher/Html20Pages/page1.htm)
• (url of new format digital.library.arizona.e
  du/cowpuncher/cowpuncher/001/)

6
Its enough to make me drive a stick through my
head!
MCA 3
Creating Digital Content and Access Tools, cont.
TREE OF LIFE

• We currently are in the middle of our
  beta-testing period for the 1.0 version of the
  Tree of Life.
• We have started work on the 2.0 version of the
  ToL. Currently, we are working on design issues,
  and are building a glossary system.
• We have hired two research assistants (Arunesh
  Gupta and Tarun Mehr) to help with the
  programming and development.

7
I just LOVE this project!
MCA 3, cont.

• Ten Books
• 20 (of 25) books shipped to vendors
• 6 (of 6) books converted (digitized) in house
• Mark-up has started on 2 of the in-house books 4
  books remain
• 3 books returned from vendors 5 more expected
  this week
• We are still on-schedule (first phase of project
  must be completed by Sept. 1, 2001) and on-budget.

8
I just LOVE the Convenio!
MCA 3, cont.

• Sonoran Archives (AGES)
• Currently payment for cataloguing work is on hold
  pending the finalization of the International
  Agreement (the Convenio)
• We will go ahead and do quality control for
  cataloguing done on a section of the archive that
  has already been digitized (Passports and Safe
  Conducts portion)

9
I see its time for me to sign the SPARC
agreement!
MCA 3, cont.

• Journal of Insect Science
• We now have two esteemed additions to our
  editorial board from Germany.
• We now have six articles up, with 2 pending
  readers approval, and 14 waiting in the wings
  for distribution to reviewers.
• We are close to meeting our one week turn-around
  time for getting an article on the Web site.
• We are exploring a relationship with BioOne and
  have been accepted for indexing in Biosis.
• Jeanne Pfander gave a presentation on JIS at
  USAIN. (US Agriculture Information Network).
• We have requested an electronic ISSN for JIS.
• The Memorandum of Understanding between the UA
  and SPARC has been finalized.
• Henry gave a very well received presentation on
  JIS at the SPARC program during the ACRL National
  Conference in Denver in March. About 250 people
  attended. Henry is now in Europe promoting the
  journal.

10
Im relaxed! Who says Im not relaxed?
MCA 3, cont.

• Southwest Thesaurus
• A prototype of the thesaurus was
• demonstrated at the Faculty Showcase on
• May 3.
• Amy Warner, a Thesaurus Design Specialist
• and Information Architect, visited the
  thesaurus team as a consultant on May 4 and
  provided useful feedback through a 10-page report
• The team is evaluating her recommendations and
  expects to implement most of them.

11
MCA 3, cont.

• Sitesearch
• We are continuing to work with LIST to finish
  moving Sitesearch completely into the new
  production environment.

SiteSearch is the summit!
12
Tiny bubbles make me happy!
MCA 4
Coordinating and Integrating Access to Digital
Resources

• Documenting the Landscape
• Charge for Access for this
• year was completed and handed off.
• The IT Planning Group continues to meet regularly
  and will define and refine areas of work
  belonging to the teams involved.

13
Learnings (Some Examples)

• From Little Cowpuncher
• Learned the importance of documenting our
  standards and project plans, especially when
  multiple people are working on the same project.
• Learned the importance of determining the
  potential vs. actual scope of a project before
  beginning it.
• Learned how much we don't know.
• From Ten Books
• Choosing and applying a Document Type Definition
  (DTD)
• Basics of marking up a document in XML using
  software (X-Metal) -- but much remains to be
  learned
• Basics of planning and implementing a text-based
  digital conversion project

• From Journal of Insect Science
• Documenting the roles of project members early on
  will save confusion later
• From Southwest Thesaurus project
• Learned the basic steps of thesaurus
  construction, which include establish the
  purpose and scope of the thesaurus organize the
  words into broad categories establish the
  sematic relationship between the words determine
  the best software package input the data
• The process was complicated by having 32 people
  from a Library School class enter the data, but
  it was a rewarding experience nonetheless
• Would hire the consultant sooner rather than
  later next time