  We have identified a metal-strong (logN(Zn+) > 13.15 or logN(Si+) > 15.95)
DLA (MSDLA) population from an automated quasar (QSO) absorber search in the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 3 (SDSS-DR3) quasar sample, and find that
MSDLAs comprise ~5% of the entire DLA population with z_abs > 2.2 found in QSO
sightlines with r < 19.5. We have also acquired 27 Keck ESI follow-up spectra
of metal-strong candidates to evaluate our automated technique and examine the
MSDLA candidates at higher resolution. We demonstrate that the rest equivalent
widths of strong ZnII 2026 and SiII 1808 lines in low-resolution SDSS spectra
are accurate metal-strong indicators for higher-resolution spectra, and predict
the observed equivalent widths and signal-to-noise ratios needed to detect
certain extremely weak lines with high-resolution instruments. We investigate
how the MSDLAs may affect previous studies concerning a dust-obscuration bias
and the N(HI)-weighted cosmic mean metallicity <Z(z)>. Finally, we include a
brief discussion of abundance ratios in our ESI sample and find that underlying
mostly Type II supernovae enrichment are differential depletion effects due to
dust (and in a few cases quite strong); we present here a handful of new Ti and
Mn measurements, both of which are useful probes of depletion in DLAs. Future
papers will present detailed examinations of particularly metal-strong DLAs
from high-resolution KeckI/HIRES and VLT/UVES spectra.
