Academic%20Libraries%20and%20the%20Future%20of%20Resource%20Discovery

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Academic Libraries and the Future of Resource
Discovery
Marshall Breeding Director for Innovative
Technology and Research Vanderbilt University
Library Nashville, TN USA
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Summary

• Marshall Breeding will discuss some of the trends
  that are taking place in the arena of
  next-generation resource discovery. Over the
  last few years, we have seen a major emphasis on
  replacing traditional online catalogs provided
  through our integrated library systems to a new
  generation of discovery environments, which
  operate independently from the ILS. Both open
  source and commercial products compete for
  attention. In recent months, yet another wave of
  products, with index populated with populated
  with enormous collections of content have entered
  the scene. Library automation has entered a new
  phase that calls into question almost all the
  previously held assumptions. Breeding will give
  a tour of this new landscape and the options and
  issues that face academic libraries.

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Current Library Automation Business Environment
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LJ Automation System Marketplace

• Annual Industry report published in Library
  Journal
• 2009 Investing in the future
• 2008 Opportunity out of turmoil
• 2007 An industry redefined
• 2006 Reshuffling the deck
• 2005 Gradual evolution
• 2004 Migration down, innovation up
• 2003 The competition heats up
• 2002 Capturing the migrating customer

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Upheavals in the library automation arena

• Industry Consolidation
• Abrupt transitions for major library automation
  products
• Increased industry control by external financial
  investors
• Demise of the traditional OPAC
• Frustration with ILS products and vendors
• Open Source alternatives hit the mainstream

Breeding, Marshall Perceptions 2008 an
international survey of library automation.
http//www.librarytechnology.org/perceptions2008.
pl January 2009.
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ILS Industry in Transition

• Consolidation through mergers and acquisitions
  have resulted in a fewer number of players
  larger companies
• Uncomfortable level of product narrowing
• Increased ownership by external interests
• Yet Some companies and products continue on
  solid ground

Breeding, Marshall Automation system marketplace
2008 Opportunity Out of Turmoil Library
Journal. April 1, 2008.
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Product and Technology Trends

• Innovation below expectations
• Conventional ILS less tenable
• Proliferation of products related to e-content
  management
• New genre of discovery-layer interfaces

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Web 2.0 / Collaborative Computing

• Currently implemented ad hoc
• Many libraries putting up blogs, wikis, and
  fostering engagement in social networking sites
• Proliferation of silos with no integration or
  interoperability with larger library Web presence
• Next Gen Build social and collaborative features
  into core automation components

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The Mandate for Openness
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Opportunities for Openness

• Open Source Software
• Alternative to traditionally licensed software
• Open Systems
• Software that doesnt hold data hostage
• Open Access to Data and Content
• OpenLibrary VS WorldCat?

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Open Source Alternatives

• Explosive interest in Open Source driven by
  disillusionment with current vendors and
  increasing support of this software licensing
  model
• Beginning to emerge as a practical option both in
  the ILS and discovery layer arenas
• TOC (Total Cost of Ownership) varies relative to
  proprietary commercial model
• Many libraries document substantial savings
• Both open source and commercial software involve
  risk

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Open Source ILS enters the mainstream

• Earlier era of pioneering efforts to ILS shifting
  into one where open source alternatives fall in
  the mainstream
• Off-the-shelf, commercially supported product
  available
• Still a minority player, but gaining ground

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Open Source ILS options

• Koha
• Commercial support
• LibLime North America
• BibLibre -- France
• Evergreen
• Commercial support from Equinox Software
• OPALS
• Commercial support from Media Flex
• VuFind
• Blacklight

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Impact of Open Source ILS

• Some libraries moving from traditionally licensed
  products to open source products with commercial
  support plans
• Disruption of library automation industry
• new pressures on incumbent vendors to deliver
  more innovation and to satisfy concerns for
  openness
• Low-cost options may help moderate pricing of
  commercial products
• New competition / More options

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More Open Systems

• Pressure for traditionally licensed products to
  become more open
• APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) let
  libraries access and manipulate their data
  outside of delivered software
• A comprehensive set of APIs potentially give
  libraries more flexibility and control in
  accessing data and services and in extending
  functionality than having access to the source
  code.
• Customer access to APIs does not involve as much
  risk to breaking core system functions, avoids
  issues of version management and code forking
  associated with open source models.

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A New Generation of Discovery Interfaces for
Library Collections
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Crowded Landscape of Information Providers on the
Web

• Lots of non-library Web destinations deliver
  content to library patrons
• Google Scholar
• Amazon.com
• Wikipedia
• Ask.com
• Do Library Web sites and catalogs meet the
  information needs of our users?
• Do they attract their interest?

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The Competition
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(No Transcript)
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Traditional ILS
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Better?
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Demand for compelling library interfaces

• Urgent need for libraries to offer interfaces
  their users will like to use
• Move into the current millennium
• Powerful search capabilities in tune with how the
  Web works today
• Meet user expectations set by other Web
  destination

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Inadequacy of ILS OPACs

• Online Catalog modules provided with an ILS
  subject to broad criticism as failing to meet
  expectations of growing segments of library
  patrons.
• Not great at delivering electronic content
• Complex text-based interfaces
• Relatively weak keyword search engines
• Lack of good relevancy sorting
• Narrow scope of content

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Disjointed approach to information and service
delivery

• Silos Prevail
• Books Library OPAC (ILS module)
• Articles Aggregated content products, e-journal
  collections
• OpenURL linking services
• E-journal finding aids (Often managed by link
  resolver)
• Local digital collections
• ETDs, photos, rich media collections
• Metasearch engines
• All searched separately

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Change underway

• Widespread dissatisfaction with legacy OPACs.
  Many efforts toward next-generation discovery
  layer products.
• Movement among libraries to break out of the
  current mold of library catalogs and offer new
  interfaces better suited to the expectations of
  library users.
• Decoupling of the front-end interface from the
  back-end library automation system.
• Eventual redesign of the ILS to be better suited
  for current library collections of digital and
  print content

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Discovery Products for Library Collections

• Concepts and Definitions

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Online Catalog vs Discovery Layer

• Online Catalog
• Interface conventions from an earlier Web era
• Scope Tied to the ILS and its content domain

• Discovery Layer
• Modern interface elements
• Scope aims to address broad range of components
  that constitute library collections

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More than the library catalog

• More comprehensive information discovery
  environments
• Its no longer enough to provide a catalog
  limited to print resources
• Digital resources cannot be an afterthought
• Systems designed for e-content only are also
  problematic
• Forcing users to use different interfaces
  depending on type of content becoming less
  tenable
• Libraries working toward consolidated user
  environments that give equal footing to digital
  and print resources

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Comprehensive Discovery Service

• Current distributed query model of federated
  search model not adequate
• Expanded scope of search through harvested
  content
• Consolidated search services based on metadata
  and data gathered in advance (like OAI-PMH)
• Problems of scale diminished
• Problems of cooperation persist
• Federated search currently operates as a plug-in
  component of next-gen interfaces.

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Web 2.0 Flavorings

• Strategic infrastructure Web 2.0
• A more social and collaborative approach
• Web Tools and technology that foster
  collaboration
• Integrated blogs, wiki, tagging, social
  bookmarking, user rating, user reviews
• Avoid Web 2.0 information silos

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Interface Features / User Experience

• Simple point of entry
• Optional advanced search
• Relevancy ranked results
• Facets for narrowing and navigation
• Query enhancement spell check, etc
• Suggested related results / recommendation
  service
• Enriched visual and textual content
• Single Sign-on

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Relevancy Ranking

• Based on advanced search engines specifically
  designed for relevancy
• Endeca, Lucene, FAST, BrainWare, etc
• Web users expect relevancy ordered results
• The good stuff should be listed first
• Users tend not to delve deep into a result list
• Good relevancy requires a sophisticated approach,
  including objective matching criteria
  supplemented by popularity and relatedness
  factors.

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New Paradigm for search and navigation

• Let users drill down through the result set
  incrementally narrowing the field
• Faceted Browsing
• Drill-down vs up-front Boolean or Advanced
  Search
• gives the users clues about the number of hits in
  each sub topic
• Ability to explore collections without a priori
  knowledge
• Visual search tools
• Navigational Bread crumbs
• Select / deselect facets

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Query / Result Enhancement

• Did you mean? and other features to avoid No
  results found
• Validated spell check / query suggestions
• Automatic inclusion of authorized and related
  terms
• More like this recommendation service
• Make the query and the response to it better than
  the query provided

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The Ideal Scope Discovery Layer products

• Attempt to collapse silos or draw appropriately
  from each silo
• Unified user experience
• A single point of entry into all the content and
  services offered by the library
• Print Electronic
• Local Remote
• Locally created Content
• User contributed content

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Pre-populated discovery services

• New-generation interface
• Harvested local content
• Vendor-supplied indexes of library content
• E-journals, databases, e-books
• Book collections beyond local library collections

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Web scale discovery

• Indexing the full corpus of information available
  globally
• Or at least major portions
• Google aims to address all the worlds
  information
• Not quite comprehensive partial harvesting of
  any given resource
• Discovery Layer Products for libraries aim to
  address all content collected by libraries
• Print
• Remotely access electronic content e-journals,
  e-books, databases, licensed and open access.
• Local special collections digital and print.
• Addresses the comprehensive body of content held
  within library collections
• Comprehensive, unified

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Deep search

• Entering post-metadata search era
• Increasing opportunities to search the full
  contents
• Google Library Print, Google Publisher, Open
  Content Alliance, etc.
• High-quality metadata will improve search
  precision
• Commercial search providers already offer search
  inside the book and searching across the full
  text of large book collections
• Not currently available through library search
  environments
• Deep search highly improved by high-quality
  metadata
• See Systems Librarian, May 2008 Beyond the
  current generation of next-generation interfaces
  deeper search

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Beyond Discovery to Fulfillment / Delivery

• Fulfillment oriented
• Search -gt select -gt view
• Delivery/Fulfillment much harder than discovery
• Back-end complexity should be as seamless as
  possible to the user
• Offer services for digital and print content

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New Generation Library Interfaces

• Current Commercial and Open Source Products

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Discovery Interface Products

• AquaBrowser
• Ex Libris Primo
• Innovative Interfaces Encore
• Serials Solutions Summon (under development)
• Medialab Solutions AquaBrowser
• SirsiDynix Enterprise
• The Library Corporation LS2 PAC
• VUFind (open source)
• BiblioCommons
• eXtensible Catalog (under development)

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Discovery product Trend

• Initial products focused on technology
• AquaBrowser, Endeca, Primo, Encore, VUfind
• Mostly locally-installed software
• Current phase focused on pre-populated indexes
  that aim to deliver Web-scale discovery
• Summon (Serials Solutions)
• WorldCat Local (OCLC)
• EBSCO Discovery Service (EBSCO)
• All hosted services

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Web-scale vs local discovery

• Local discovery provides flexibility for
  libraries to create customized access to
  collections
• Web-scale discovery emphasizes unified access and
  broad scope

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Summon from Serials Solutions

• New Discovery Service
• Consolidated index harvested from many sources
• ProQuest, Gale, etc
• 300,000,000 articles represented
• Full-text search Citations
• Local catalog data harvested, real-time link to
  holdings
• Other local repositories harvested
• Others available through metasearch

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WorldCat Local discovery service

• Existing service in pilot stage for new discovery
  service
• WorldCat.org data ArticleFirst (30 million
  articles)
• Agreement with EBSCO to load EBSCOhost citation
  data into WorldCat
• Pursuing agreements with additional content
  providers

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WorldCat Local quick start

• No-cost option to FirstSearch subscribers
• No reclamation to reconcile local ILS with
  WorldCat
• One ILS supported must be among supported
  products
• Program to expose thousands of libraries to
  WorldCat Local as a discovery option

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WorldCat Local automation platform

• Extend WorldCat Local to include
• Circulation
• Delivery
• Acquisitions
• License Management
• Positioned as Web-scale, cloud computing model,
  cooperative library system
• Pilot sites being finalized general availability
  in 2010

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Questions and discussion