Library News for the Faculty

From University Librarian Gary E. Strong

What does Google Scholar mean to us -- to UCLA faculty and to the Library? That's a question I heard repeatedly following Google's announcement last December that it was partnering with Harvard University, the New York Public Library, Stanford University, and the University of Michigan to digitize portions of their holdings.

Needless to say, the announcement was provocative both for what it did and for what it didn't say. Having the vast holdings of a major research university library available online is undoubtedly appealing, but it raises questions that have not yet been answered.

How will copyright concerns be addressed? What technology will be used to do the scanning, and how will it affect the items? Who will ensure that storage methods for the digital files keep pace with changing technology? Will users be able to download entire texts, or only read page by page on screen? And who will be allowed to use these online holdings?

I can't answer those questions, but I can tell you what the UC libraries are doing to explore how we can use these new developments to benefit UCLA faculty, staff, and students.

Discussions between academic librarians and Google have resulted in UC-eLinks being added to Google Scholar. This means that if you search Google Scholar from a computer on campus or from off campus through the campus proxy server, you will be able to move, via an intermediary UC-eLinks page, from a reference to an article to the full text of the article in journals for which we purchase online subscriptions.

In addition, we are investigating the possibility of enabling that link to be a direct one. This would enable users to go directly from the reference to the article without going through a UC-eLinks page.

Moving along a related but more focused track, the California Digital Library (CDL) is experimenting with a search tool from Ex Libris, the company that created the technology the Melvyl Catalog uses. Google Scholar searches a broad range of scholarly literature, including journals, books, abstracts, technical reports, and theses in a variety of disciplines, but it does not allow the search to be limited by format or discipline. CDL's investigations are focusing on the effectiveness and utility of creating more focused subsets of scholarly literature, such as those in a specific format or subject area.

The CDL is also testing tools that will enable the UC libraries to present broader ranges of focused resources to users. These include RSS feeds, which are most often used by news sites and blogs and allow the most updated information to be provided to a user; content harvested using the Open Archives Initiative, which develops and promotes interoperability standards that facilitate access to online information; and technology that crawls Web sites to discover content not uncovered by basic search engines.

The future promises to be one in which ever-increasing amounts of information are created and made available online. But far from signaling the demise of the library, Google's efforts make it clear that the library is more essential than ever.

One reason is the role of subject specialists, who ensure the quality of Library resources. These individuals work with faculty, students, and content providers to make sure that the Library collects and makes available the most relevant and significant scholarship in a given discipline.

Another is cost of accessing resources. A resource that is available online is not necessarily available for free, so the Library licenses access to these resources. For example, if you access the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), from a campus computer or an off-campus computer connecting through the proxy server, you'll be able to search for words. That is because the Library has purchased a license for the OED; it is not available free of charge to non-subscribers.

Another reason for the Library's continuing importance is the nature of its search tools. It's more efficient to use the UCLA Library Catalog to search for books held by UCLA libraries or to use a discipline-specific index to find articles on a given subject than to use Google or Yahoo. These more focused search tools are all available through the "Search" menu on the UCLA Library homepage.

And finally, there is the human factor. If you have questions or need assistance with a particular project, the Library can help in person, by email, on the phone, or online. And no matter what directions technology takes, that one fact -- that the Library staff is here to assist you wherever and whenever you have questions -- will not change.