New Books in ACLS E-Book Project

The ACLS History E-Book Project has just added 130 books to its collection,bringing the
total to 1398. As current subscribers, you have access to allof the new books added to
the collection. Instructions for downloading your new MARC records are in an addendum
below. However, there has been an important change in our MARC records.

With the current release, the History E-Book Project now is making use of Handle
technology for its persistent url system. This change is the result of innovations by our
distribution partners at the University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office
(SPO). SPO's former permanent url system (the name resolver system) will continue to
function, but there are some advantages to the new handle-based urls that make it worth
reloading your catalog records to take advantage of this change.

The old name resolver system was developed at a time when standards and methods for
permanent urls were still evolving and was always intended as a temporary bridge to a
more functional persistent url scheme. Although persistent url technology will no doubt
continue to evolve its current stability made this a reasonable time to make this change.
The Handle System, developed by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, is a
general-purpose distributed information system that provides efficient, extensible, and
secure identifier and resolution services for use on networks such as the Internet.

As well as ensuring greater reliability and meeting current standards for persistence,
the switch will also mean some changes in the user experience. Formerly, the persistence
urls took the form of http://name.umdl.umich.edu/heb99999.
Handle based persistent urls look like http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.99999.

More important for most users, the handle-based url will resolve directly to the volume
(except in the case of multiple volumes associated with a single record, in which case
the user will be presented with a list of the volumes from which to choose).

The old form of the urls will continue to work, but the new urls are more durable over
the long run as well as more satisfying to users, and HEB wouldlike to encourage you to
update your records.

More information about handles can be found at:
http://www.handle.net/introduction.html

If you have any questions, please email us at info@hebook.org.

Best,
Eileen Gardiner and Ronald G. Musto

MARC RECORDS DOWNLOAD
The MARC records for the ACLS History E-Book Project are available via yourbrowser from
the following url: ftp.umdl.umich.edu/pub/records/

You will have two choices for downloading records:
acls1-5a.zip
acls5a.zip

New subscribers should downlaod the full set: acls1-5a.zip.

We also encourage all other subscribers to download the full set of acls1-5a.zip and
replace your older records with the new records with Handles. Thenew records will simply
overwrite your old records.

However, should you choose to simply add the new records available and havemixed url and
Handle records, you can simply download acls5a.zip.

Both downloads contain three files:
a. The records in USMARC communications format
b. The same records in ASCII format
c. readme.txt - in ASCII format (explains what is contained in each of
the above)

You will notice a discrepancy between the number of files and the number ofbooks in the
collection due to the fact that multi-volume collections havea single record.