UCLA Litbrarian

I am pleased to announce that UCLA now has Literature Criticism Online (if this link doesn’t work, it is probably because you need a UCLA IP address to access it). This database provides electronic access to most of the print content available in reference sources such as Contemporary Literary Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism, Literature Criticism from 1400-1800, Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Drama Criticism, Children’s Literature Review, and Shakespearean Criticism–all of which we currently own in our print reference collections at UCLA.  These print runs take up approximately 150 linear feet of space in our reference collections but do not see much use. We will be moving these print volumes out of the reference reading rooms and into SRLF.

Why are we going for the online version if we have already paid for the print?  A few reasons: 1. These very expensive print sets don’t see much use anymore, even though there is a wealth of very useful information in them. This may be our fault as librarians for not promoting the print materials vigorously enough, but it seems that many scholars are–increasingly, and for a variety of reasons–erring on the side of convenience (full-text, online) rather than comprehensiveness (hunting down every single useful resource they can find). 2. Space is always an issue in our libraries and these sets take up a great deal of space. If they are not seeing much use, it is preferable to relocate them and use that space for reference materials that are not available in electronic form. 3. There are significant cost-savings involved in the long term by going to one digital resource rather than having duplicate sets of the print in multiple libraries on campus.

If you would like me to conduct a training session for this resource, individually or for a group, please let me know.

Happy Canada Day!  This seems an appropriate moment to highlight Canadian literature collections at UCLA and elsewhere in the University of California system.  At the moment, there are no Canadian literature programs, per se, in the UC system. However, although Canadian literature is not a huge focus of study at UCLA, I conducted a straw poll recently that indicated that there are people throughout the English and Comparative Literature departments, as well as French/Francophone Studies and perhaps elsewhere, who are making use of Canadian literature resources on a fairly regular basis. 

In light of this situation, University of California literature librarians banded together a few years ago to create a Canadian Shared Print project for anglophone Canadian literature. This project began several years ago as a pilot but will continue for the foreseeable future.  Basically, what happens is that the UC campuses pool their money for anglophone Canadian literature and purchase single, shared copies of a wide variety of Canadian fiction, poetry, and drama titles.  These books are stored at the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF) and can be located by searching Melvyl or OCLC WorldCat (or the new “Next Generation Melvyl” catalog). UC borrowers can then quickly and easily request these books.  In the meantime, my counterparts at the other UC campuses and I monitor the list of books we are getting through this shared print program and then decide whether we want to spend money on a duplicate copy for our local campus (e.g., if it is a major author like Margaret Atwood, or if I know that a professor is teaching a course featuring a particular author or title).

This program is great because it does not restrict us from collecting works of Canadian literature that we think our campuses need, but it helps us avoid spending money on unnecessary duplicate copies where 1 copy in the UC system would satisfy scholarly needs. If you have questions about how this shared print project works or comments about it, please let me know. We just finished a rigorous assessment of the project and welcome feedback from users of these materials. If you’re a librarian considering this type of shared print project, I’d be happy to answer your questions or point you toward our resident shared print expert in the California Digital Library.

 If francophone Canadian literature is your thing, rest assured that I am busy collecting in this area as well, trying to acquire works by established authors as well as up and coming authors.  If you have suggestions of francophone Canadian authors, poets, or titles to watch for, please let me know!

We have access to a great resource for 19th-century research–C19: The Nineteenth Century Index.  This is very good news as it enables us to more effectively access some materials we already had in print reference volumes but also some information for which we had no subscriptions.

C19: The Nineteenth Century Index (University of California systemwide access)

“The most comprehensive and dynamic source for discovering nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives. The C19 Index draws on the strength of established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole’s Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.5 million books and official publications, 71,000 archival collections and 16.3 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers. C19 Index now provides integrated access to 12 bibliographic indexes, including almost a million records from the ongoing digitization of British Periodicals Collections I and II.” 

If you would like me to show you around this new resource, do contact me for an appointment or stop by the Reference Desk in Young Research Library or the College Library (Powell).

Thousands upon thousands of librarians–public, academic, special collections, and more–will be converging on Anaheim this weekend for the American Library Association’s annual convention.  I will be attending for the first time and hope to post some of my observations and notes here, if not during the convention, then afterward.  Since I did not enter academic librarianship through the conventional route (i.e., I have a subject Ph.D. rather than a library degree), this will be something of a cultural immersion experience for me.  And since I have never had the pleasure of visiting Disneyland (or Disney anything, for that matter), this will also be a cultural experience of a different sort, I expect.

I recently surveyed faculty and grad students in the English and Comp Lit Departments here at UCLA to see what terminology would get them to click on a web link if they wanted information pertaining to copyright, intellectual property, dissemination of research, academic publishing, and so on.  Here in the library, we lump all this stuff under the heading “scholarly communication.”  But in the survey, “scholarly communication” was roundly rejected by all respondents.  Not much of a surprise there.  Here are the results I got:

A. creating and using scholarship (or scholarly output) – 6%
B. scholarly communication - 0
C. copyright and IP issues – 72%
D. Other, please specify – 22% (”Publishing and Intellectual Property” or “Issues in Scholarly Publishing”; “Electronic Scholarship” or “Virtual Academic Publishing Issues”; “Copyright, Publication, and Intellectual Property Issues”; “Publishing Resources and Services”)

We will definitely use this feedback to inform the web resources we are in the process of designing for our campus community.  The “we” here refers to the Scholarly Communication Steering Committee of the UCLA Library, of which I am a member. 

The library world is not likely to jettison the term “scholarly communication” anytime soon.  That said, important and relevant resources are springing up everywhere, so scholars should be able to find information they need regarding copyright, intellectual property, dissemination of research, academic publishing, etc., as long as they know where to look for it.  One great resource of which I recently became aware is CreateChange.org, a campaign spearheaded by The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).  Clearly, scholars need help when negotiating author agreements with publishers or when deciding what qualifies as fair use in the classroom, but the issues of scholarly communication go beyond these.  Traditional modes of scholarly communication—including but not limited to book and journal publication—need to transform to accommodate new modes of scholarship and to ensure that this scholarship is accessible to as many scholars as possible in perpetuity. More than anything, there needs to be a shift in the culture of scholarship and publishing in higher education and this is where CreateChange.org comes in.

This may be of interest to history of the book scholars as well as new media scholars.  Charles W. Bailey, Jr., of digital-scholarship.org, has pulled together a bibliography of materials examining a range of issues relating to Google Book Search. 

Here is Bailey’s announcement:

The Google Book Search Bibliography, Version 2 is now available from Digital Scholarship.  This bibliography presents selected English-language articles and other works that are useful in understanding Google Book Search. It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Book Search and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be  identical.  

For a discussion of the numerous changes in my digital publications since my resignation from the University of Houston Libraries, see Digital Scholarship Publications Overview.

The University of California (UC) Libraries have launched a pilot version of a replacement for the current Melvyl Catalog, which contains records for holdings at all ten UC campuses.  Users are encouraged to test the pilot, called Next-Generation Melvyl, and offer feedback on how well it meets their needs.  The UCLA version is available at http://ucla.worldcat.org.  

The pilot features a single interface that searches holdings in all UC Libraries, those of libraries around the world, and UC books digitized by Google. It also searches for article references in education (from journals indexed in ERIC), medicine and health (from journals indexed in Medline), U.S. government publications (from journals indexed in GPO), and general topics (from journals indexed in ArticleFirst).  UC-eLinks can then be used to access the full text or print-copy information for journals to which there is a UC subscription. 

Because the process of loading records into the pilot database is extremely complex, most but not all Melvyl records will be available during this testing phase.  Throughout the pilot, the current Melvyl Catalog (http://melvyl.cdlib.org) and all its functionality will be maintained and available as usual.  

Search results are displayed with local records first, then UC records, then records from other libraries worldwide.  From the individual records, users can check circulation status, place holds on items at their home campuses, and request items held elsewhere, both within the UC system and beyond.  

Other features include the ability to easily refine searches, build and share lists of library resources, view personal ratings and reviews of items, cite items in various styles, export citations in multiple formats, and search the catalog using several languages.    

The pilot, which begins today, will last at least six months. Following its completion, a decision will be made about whether to move forward with it or to pursue other options.  

Next-Generation Melvyl has been created in collaboration with the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC).  This partnership enables the UC libraries to integrate their collection resources – whether purchased, locally digitized, or digitized by third parties – with collections around the world in ways that meet the needs of students and faculty.  

OCLC is a nonprofit library membership and research organization that provides computer-based cataloging, reference, resource sharing, preservation, and electronic content services to 57,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories. OCLC and its member libraries worldwide also have created and maintain WorldCat (http://worldcat.org), the world’s richest online resource for finding library materials.�

Since this blog’s inception, I have planned all along to announce significant new additions to our literature and related collections here in UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library (YRL).  Here I am, nearly at the end of Spring Quarter, finally able to start such announcements with more regularity.  Better late than never, I hope.

 Just received at YRL is a 3-volume set of The Collected Letters of Rosina Bulwer Lytton, edited by Marie Mulvey-Roberts and published by Pickering and Chatto.  Here is a blurb from the publisher’s announcement:

“Rosina Bulwer Lytton is remembered as the ‘mad wife’ of the eminent Victorian politician and novelist, Edward Bulwer Lytton. In fact, she was a clever and successful writer who published thirteen novels, a memoir, and several pamphlets and broadsheets. She was also a witty and prolific correspondent and used her pen to wage a life-long vendetta against her estranged husband. Over 800 of Rosina’s letters survive. This unique record reveals the innermost workings of the Victorian literary and political establishments. To date, only a fraction has been published; most remain in private collections.”

This set will nicely complement our existing Rosina Bulwer Lytton holdings in the Michael Sadleir Collection of 19th-Century British Fiction, located in the YRL Special Collections Department.

You can find The Collected Letters of Rosina Bulwer Lytton in the Library Catalog under call number PR4959.L5 Z48 2008.

MLA has just announced the release of the third edition of its longstanding style manual, the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing.  According to an announcement by MLA President Rosemary Feal, “This new edition of the MLA Style Manual introduces revisions and refinements of MLA documentation style, and this updated style will be used in MLA publications starting in January 2009. Authors of articles, books, theses, dissertations, and other scholarly works in MLA style should use the guidelines in this volume.”

You can expect this new edition to hit UCLA Library reference collections in the near future.

This just out from Open Humanities Press. Hopefully this is the first of many such open access projects in the humanities!

For Immediate Release, May 5, 2008
Contact: Sigi Jöttkandt +32 (0)2 792 7346LAUNCH OF OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS – Open Access expands to humanities disciplines with a bold new publishing initiative in critical and cultural theoryBrussels, Belgium – On May 12, 2008, the Open Humanities Press (OHP) will launch with 7 of the leading Open Access journals in critical and cultural theory. A non-profit, international grass-roots initiative, OHP marks a watershed in the growing embrace of Open Access in the humanities.“OHP is a bold and timely venture” said J. Hillis Miller, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, a long-time supporter of the Open Access movement and OHP board member. “It is designed to make peer-reviewed scholarly and critical works in a number of humanistic disciplines and cross-disciplines available free online. Initially primarily concerned with journals, OHP may ultimately also include book-length writings. This project is an admirable response to the current crisis in scholarly publishing and to the rapid shift from print media to electronic media. This shift, and OHP’s response to it, are facets of what has been called ‘critical climate change.’”“The future of scholarly publishing lies in Open Access” agreed Jonathan Culler, Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University and fellow member of OHP’s editorial advisory board. “Scholars in the future should give careful consideration to the where they publish, since their goal should be to make the products of their research as widely available as possible, to people throughout the world. Open Humanities Press is a most welcome initiative that will help us move in this direction.”

OHP will give new confidence to humanities academics who wish to make their work freely accessible but have concerns about the academic standards of online publishing. In addition to being peer-reviewed, all OHP journals undergo rigorous vetting by an editorial board of leading humanities scholars.

OHP’s board includes Alain Badiou, Chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, Donna Haraway, Professor of the History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies, UC Santa Cruz, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation, UC Irvine, Gayatri Spivak, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University, Peter Suber, Open Access Project Director for Public Knowledge and Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University, who has been leading the public debate on the crisis of academic publishing in the humanities.

“Open-access publishing in serious, peer-reviewed online scholarly journals is one of the keys to solving a financial crisis that has afflicted university libraries everywhere and has had a chilling effect on virtually every academic discipline” said Greenblatt.“Making scholarly work available without charge on the internet has offered hope for the natural sciences and now offers hope in the humanities.”

With initial offerings in continental philosophy, cultural studies, new media, film and literary criticism, OHP serves researchers and students as the Open Access gateway for editorially-vetted scholarly literature in the humanities. The first journals to become part of OHP are Cosmos and History, Culture Machine, Fibreculture, Film-Philosophy, International Journal of Zizek Studies, Parrhesia and Vectors.

“But it’s not simply a matter of what Open Access can do for the humanities” added Gary Hall, Professor of Media and Performing Arts at Coventry University, co-editor of Culture Machine and one of the co-founders of OHP. “It is also a case of what can the humanities do for Open Access. Researchers, editors and publishers in the humanities have developed very different professional cultures and intellectual practices to the STMs who have dominated the discussion around Open Access to date. OHP is ideally positioned to explore some of the exciting new challenges and perspectives in scholarly communication that are being opened up for Open Access as it is increasingly adopted within the humanities.”

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Open Humanities Press is an international Open Access publishing collective specializing in critical and cultural theory. OHP was formed by academics to overcome the current crisis in scholarly publishing that threatens intellectual freedom and academic rigor worldwide. OHP journals are academically certified by OHP’s independent board of international scholars. All OHP publications are peer-reviewed, published under open access licenses, and freely and immediately available online at www.openhumanitiespress.org.