Skip to content Skip to navigation

Library News

UC Merced Library Welcomes Lindsay Davis


June 24, 2016


The library is pleased to welcome Instruction Librarian Lindsay Davis to its staff. Lindsay started on June 1st. She comes to UC Merced from Merced College’s Los Banos Campus Library. She has also held roles at the CSU Stanislaus University Library, Stanislaus County Library, and the Library of Congress. She earned a Masters of Library and Information Science from San Jose State University and a BA in history from CSU Stanislaus. As a first generation college student and daughter of an immigrant, she understands how intimidating academic libraries can be for brand-new students. She hopes to help students feel comfortable asking for research assistance and learn research skills that will help them write those term papers and think more critically about information outside the classroom, too. Lindsay’s primary role at UC Merced is teaching research skills in classes, developing instructional materials and tools, and assisting students in research consultations whether in-person or...

WEST Libraries Reach 500,000 Volumes


June 7, 2016


The libraries of the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) have reached a milestone in building a lasting shared print library collection, successfully archiving 500,000 volumes.
The Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) is a distributed shared print journal repository program in the western region of the United States. Along with libraries from the University of California system, more than 70 research and academic libraries currently participate in WEST, including libraries from Stanford University, the University of Washington, Arizona State University, the University of Oregon, and Rice University among many others.
Through distributed retention commitments and archive-building activities, WEST safeguards the scholarly record while also creating opportunities to reallocate library space for new collections and innovative user spaces. Print journal volumes are consolidated and retained at high-density library storage facilities and more than thirty-five libraries....

Calisphere exceeds half a million items!


May 27, 2016


“The deeper you look, the more you’ll discover.” Today, the motto of Calisphere is particularly appropriate given the growth of the collection to over half a million items!
Calisphere’s new metadata infrastructure has made it possible to provide access to more digital content than ever. The site has grown exponentially since its re-release this past fall, and the growth is set to continue, as more institutions sign up to add their collections the site.
Recent additions include the Gold Rush Life collection from the University of the Pacific, containing correspondence, diaries, and other primary source materials on the lives of individuals during the California Gold Rush; photographs, news clippings, postcards, and programs from the 1910 Los Angeles International Aviation Meet, contributed by CSU Dominguez Hills; and over 3,000 audio and video recordings digitized as part of the California Audiovisual Preservation Project.

A Victory For Fair Use


May 19, 2016


The Authors Guild’s decade long lawsuit against Google came to an end April 18th when the Supreme Court declined to hear the Authors Guild’s Appeal of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision from October 2015. By declining, the Supreme Court affirmed the Circuit Court’s ruling that Google’s digitization of library collections, the creation of search functionality, and display of snippets are all non-infringing fair uses. If one takes into account the fair use findings in other similar cases, there are now four argued rulings which affirm that the work undertaken by participants in the Google Library Project to convert library collections to digital form constitute fair use as defined by U.S. Copyright law, a victory for fair use, libraries, scholars, researchers, and the public alike.
The University of California has been in partnership with the Google Library Project since 2006. As result, close to 3.8 million volumes from UC Library collections have been converted to...

Video: Research Data Matters


May 13, 2016


Why is research data management important and what is the impact of good data management practices?

University of California Press and California Digital Library partner with Collaborative Knowledge Foundation to build open source publishing platform


May 12, 2016


California Digital Library and University of California Press are pleased to announce their partnership with Collaborative Knowledge Foundation to develop Editoria, a new open source, digital-first book production platform.
Through the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CDL and UCP have launched a project to create an open source platform for content and workflow management of book-length works. The goal of the project is to build a shared resource for presses and library publishers to automate book production in multiple formats using an adaptable, web-based production workflow system.
CKF, UCP and CDL are taking a cooperative approach to product design and development and will be setting up a site to make this methodology available to the public in the coming weeks. The Editoria project will continue through 2016 with a launch in early 2017.

Reimagined Libraries


April 28, 2016


UC Merced Library’s Deputy University Librarian, Donald Barclay, follows the upwards and download trends associated with libraries and reveals how they have reinvented themselves to meet users’ needs. See “Has the library outlived is usefulness in the age of Internet? You’d be surprised” in The Conversation.

41,000 new items to explore on Calisphere


April 7, 2016


Flying bees, North Korean propaganda, and Catholicism in Los Angeles are just some of the subjects represented in the more than 41,000 new items recently added to Calisphere. The 56 new collections from Loyola Marymount University, Orange County Public Libraries, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and the University of the Pacific are now available on the site. Calisphere’s new metadata infrastructure has made it possible to provide access to more digital content than ever before. This time last year, on the old platform, Calisphere provided access to approximately 250,000 digital objects; today, the new site has almost double that amount and is now approaching half a million items.
Follow this link to see a full list of the new collections.

Proquest Critical Maintenance


March 21, 2016


Proquest will be performing critical maintenance during the first weeks of April which will briefly affect access to a variety of their products.
On Saturday April 2, 2016, ProQuest will be performing maintenance that will affect access to select Humanities databases, scheduled to begin at 2pm PST and lasting for eight (8) hours. Databases in chadwyck.com.uk domains will not be available, such as American Film Institute (AFI), C19 Index, Patrologia Latina, and others.
On Thursday April 7, 2016, ProQuest’s EBL and Ebook Central platforms will be unavailable for scheduled maintenance from 2:00 pm up to 4:00 pm PST. Ebooks through Proquest may be unavailable during this time.

Exhibit Reception: Selected Works - Graduate Student Research at UC Merced


March 14, 2016


Come see how UCM graduate students are pursuing exciting research projects that make major contributions to their fields. In this second installment of the Selected Works exhibit, the accomplishments and research of two selected graduate students are highlighted.

Pages