where electronic publishing and experimentation leads to VT Digital Library
resources and services
| 4 servers | 1,311,274 e-files served | 271,000 e-files
archived |
|
Throughout 1995/96 the Scholarly Communications Project continued to focus on its mission --
publishing electronic journals and experimenting in electronic scholarly communications.
The goal to increase access to scholarly works and those of local and regional interest by
electronically developing resources serves the University Libraries and Virginia Tech
community well. The Project's endeavors add value to scholarly works that may also be
published in paper and expands library services beyond its buildings or the limits of the
campus through all day every day Internet access. Below is a summary of the resources that
were begun or enhanced this year by the University Libraries' Scholarly Communications
Project.
The Project's roster of ejournals/ grew with the addition of significant new titles, three
edited by VT faculty, two mirrored in collaboration with MIT Press, and one negotiated by a
VT faculty but edited by a University of Delaware colleague. Remarkably, four new titles (*)
are published only electronically. Please refer to Appendix 1
for fuller information about ejournals/, including continuing titles and potential new
electronic publications of the Scholarly Communications Project.
6 new scholarly electronic journals
ALAN Review
Chicago Journal of
Theoretical Computer Science *
Journal of
Computer-Aided Environmental Design and Education *
Journal of Functional and
Logic Programming *
Journal of Vocational and
Technical Education
Society for Philosophy and
Technology *
National Recognition for the Scholarly Communications Project
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu
| A directory of rated and reviewed Internet sites, awarded 3-stars to the Scholarly
Communications Project and three of its
electronic journals: Journal of
Technology Education, Journal of Industrial Teacher Education, and Journal of Veterinary
Medical Education. Catalyst received 2-stars.
(see attached documentation) |
http://borg.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/vetfda.html
| FDA Approved Animal Drug Data Base Rated among the top 5% of all Internet sites by Point Survey (notification received October 18, 1995) "Here's help for switched-on
veterinarians: a searchable database of FDA-approved animal drugs. If Fido has tapeworms,
the user can search either dogs or tapeworm and call up a list of potential medicines,
including Yomesan 5/20 and (no kidding) HappyJack Tapeworm Tablets. Or, call up the specific
drug and get ingredients, doses, restrictions, and so forth. Simple, sensible site."
|
| During 1995/96 this FDA database was migrated from plain ASCII to HTML;
updated quarterly; and received improved searching and readability of records. |
Major improvements in searching, presentation, and content (including the addition of
WDBJ-7 news reports to the Roanoke Times and Virginian Pilot news).
- Increased files available (Powell)
- Improved/automated file transfers, clean-up, mark-up, archiving (Haggerty)
- Developed Perl script that recognizes and 'decodes' article headings; divides one issue
file into individual articles files (Haggerty)
- Migrated to Excite (better search engine) (Powell)
In 1996/1997
- Phase out WAIS for newspapers
- Select or create a DTD for newspapers; migrate from HTML to SGML
Established new Web site and improved it throughout the year. Content grew from seven to
forty ETDs.
- Workflow routines expanded to include all pertinent areas and to improve timeliness of
public access (Haggerty, McMillan)
- Submission process fully automated, having a tremendous effect at every stage from
delivery by the author to access by the Graduate School, the cataloger, the public, UMI,
VTLS, and OCLC (Haggerty)
- Cataloging reverted to Technical Services and bibliographic records expanded to include
abstract and URL (Mary Hansbrough)
- Workshops (information and training) for graduate students (Haggerty, McMillan)
- Information sessions at Faculty Development Institutes (McMillan)
- Redesigned Web site to improve user access and facilitate training (McMillan)
- Slide show for southeastern university library collaborators (McMillan)
What should happen in 1996/97
- Improve search engine and supply more informative feedback from searches
- Travel to universities to initiate collaboration and implement ETDs (primarily in the
southeast with the SURA and FIPSE grant teams)
- Involve CLIOs and library liaisons more in faculty training
- Move to a production unit or add financial and staff support to SCP
- Initiated centralized access to online class materials (Powell)
- Built on initial experience during spring semester 1995 and redesigned increasingly
popular library service to students and faculty
- Moved to Oracle database
- Expanded searching capabilities and improved access
- Added options submitting PDF files for library management (Powell)
- Improved registration form and made it easier for faculty to submit information
- Improved information about each class
- Added support for course homepage registration
- Added new fields to database for course descriptions
- Implemented "fair use" guidelines for limited Internet access (Hitchingham)
- Redesigned Web site (McMillan)
- Trained approximately 600 faculty at Faculty Development Institutes; prepared training
materials for faculty and students (McMillan)
In 1996/97
- Improve faculty ability to add multiple files without repeating known data (Powell)(done)
- Redesigned Web site (McMillan)(done)
- Integrate Reserve Desk "blue" notebooks (Fenn?)
- Involve CLIOs and library liaisons more in faculty training
- Move to a production unit or add financial and staff support to SCP
- Prepared tactical plan for Information Systems (Fox, McMillan, Olivier, Powell)
- Established Website (Powell)
- Initiated development through regular seminars (lead by Powell)
- Examined pertinent topics: metadata, PURLS v. Handles, etc.
What should happen in 1996/97
- Expand discussion group to other colleges and units of the library
- Identify and analyze digital library-like projects currently underway on campus (e.g.,
Agriculture Information Systems); strive for coordination through the library
- Establish a campus-wide document naming service and institute training for publishers
(PURLs and/or Handles)
- Financial and staffing support for implementation
A Visual Text: History of Architecture Catalogue for Hypertext by Humberto L.
Rodriquez-Camilloni and Abbye A. Gorin; Center for Theory and History of Architecture,
College of Architecture and Urban Studies, 1988.
- Converted digital images from video disk, scanned/OCR'd the catalog of images
- Electronic CTHA/SCP staff: James Powell, coordinator; Peter Haggerty, coordinator, image
capture, conversion, HTML markup; Yvonne Liu (student) transcriptions, image conversion;
Stephanie Sanders (Library Automation) transcriptions; Bill Vandervoort (student) image
capture, conversion, HTML, design
In 1996/97
- Scan color slides to replace black-and-white images with higher quality color images
- Tactical Plan for Information Systems (Burr, McMillan, Worley--planning team)
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/gailmac/DigitalImagingPlan.html
- Took suggestions of the planning team, researched metadata elements, designed new system
for storage and access to digital images (Powell)
- Drafted metadata elements (Burr, Powell)
- Designed workflow from 'original' image to digital image to identification with metadata
elements and public access (Powell and planning team)
- Funded digitizing of first 300 slides (SCP)
In 1996/97: Increase effectiveness of first generation system
- Refine workflow for adding and identifying new images
- Expand search capabilities
- Evaluate metadata elements
- Usability study of metadata elements and descriptions
- Identify existing digital images
- Expand beyond University Libraries: collaborate with other units (e.g., entomology,
animal sciences, etc.) to digitize and identify image collections
Presentations about the Scholarly Communications Project (McMillan)
"Developing Digital Libraries" at CAUSE/CNI Northeast Regional Conference, Networked
Information: Challenges and Solutions, with David Seamans (UVa Etext Center), May 30, 1996,
Philadelphia
"Scholarly Communications Project: A Digital Library for the Changing Academy" at the ALCTS
Electronic Library Institute: Administrative Issues for Organization and Access, April 26,
1996, Boston
"Extending Technical Services" for the CIA Library's Staff-Readiness Program and MITRE Corp.
Presented the range of applications, roles, and practices that characterize modern
librarianship and information services delivery, February 27, 1996, MITRE in McLean, VA
Virtual Tours of the Scholarly Communications Project
- "Using the World Wide Web for Teaching, Recruiting, and Scholarly Publishing in Higher
Education" at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, with Dr. Mark Sanders (VT Technology
Education), June 21, 1996
- Polish librarians attending Open Society Institute, June 6, 1996
- Apple computer executives, April 1996
- University of California at Los Angeles librarians, Nov. 14, 1995
- University of Oslo librarians and systems delegation, Oct. 19, 1995
- Prof. Jeanne Galvin, librarian, City University, Brooklyn, NY ("Since your Scholarly
Communications Project is one of the premier collections of electronic journals, I
am interested in visiting your library and discussing the project..."Aug. 2, 1995.) She
received a grant from the Research Foundation of City University to study electronic
journals. Aug. 23, 1995
1996/1997 at the Scholarly Communications Project
- Plan space in Advanced Communications and Information Technology Center (possibly in
collaboration with BEV, CATH, VTIC)
- Migrate some SCP publications from HTML to SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language),
creating a DTD (Document Type Definition) (beginning with ejournals/ and newspapers)
- Visiting scholar, Andrew Treloar, Deakin University, Clayton, Australia (see attached)
- "Electronic Journals: A Survey of Scholarly Communications" for the American
Association of Law Librarians, Baltimore, MD, July 1997 (McMillan)
- VT's Online Class Materials for ALA Midwinter, February 1997, (McMillan)
- "Libraries in the 21st Century: A Virtual Tour of the Scholarly Communications Project"
for the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, San Diego, CA,
Nov. 18, 1996 (McMillan and speakers from University of Minnesota and National Agriculture
Library)
- Scholarly Communications Project for Landmark Communications, Dec. 16, 1997 (McMillan)
- "Scholarly Electronic Communications from University Libraries"
Preconference workshop for CAUSE/CNI "Teaching and Learning in Cyberspace;" faculty: Annette
Burr, Art & Architecture Librarian; Peter Haggerty, Programmer, Library Automation; Neill
Kipp, VT computer science graduate student; Gail McMillan, director, SCP; James Powell,
technical director, SCP. New Media Center, Sept. 11, 1996
- "Electronic Theses and Dissertations: Unlocking Access to Graduate Research"
presentation to the CAUSE/CNI Southeast Regional Conference: Teaching and Learning in
Cyberspace, Hotel Roanoke, Sept. 12, 1996 (McMillan)
- Copyright Workshop (Hanson, Hendricks, McMillan, Southard, planning team)
with Sally Wiant and Lee Hollaar presenting; sponsored by the University Libraries, Center
for Textual and Editorial Studies, and Virginia Technical Information Center, Nov. 11, 1996
- Copyright and Fair Use: ETDs, EReserves, and ejournals/, a brief presentation to Longwood
College information systems faculty in the New Media Center, Oct. 23, 1996 (McMillan)
- "VA News and other Scholarly Communications Project Activities" for the University
Libraries' Charting Our Course staff development day, August 14, 1996 (Haggerty, Powell)
- VT Digital Library and the Scholarly Communications Project for librarians and staff
from NASA Langley Technical Library, July 30, 1996 (Haggerty, McMillan, Powell with VTDL
advisory group)
Annual Report Table of Contents
http://sholar.lib.vt.edu/anrept9596/Scholar.html
