Transcript content enhancement

Improving Access to Geoscience
Resources via Content
Enhancement
Linda R. Musser
Pennsylvania State University
October 2011
What is content enhancement?
The addition of data elements in order to improve
search retrieval and/or item description.
Examples:
 table of contents
 keywords
 summaries
Essentially
additional metadata
More examples….
Dykas and Stevens, “The Richer the Records, the Better the Results: Options for
Enriching Bibliographic Records in Your OPAC” 2011 MOBIUS Conference.
2009 OCLC report
Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want
Essential findings:
Users rely on and expect enhanced content,
including summaries/abstracts and tables
of contents.
These elements enhance searching and aid in
identifying sources worth pursuing.
What Users Want
What Librarians Want
What Users Want
Discovery-related information elements
beyond author and title, such as
summaries, excerpts and tables of
contents, are essential aspects.
Libraries need to make it easier for users to
quickly ascertain whether items meet
their needs …to help users decide if it is
worth their time to obtain the items.
By the numbers….
By the numbers…
423 words
8 instances of ‘environmental’
10 instances of ‘geology’
10 instances of ‘introduction’
Value of Content Enrichment
Tables of contents
increased use
• With table of contents, use increased by 45%
(Morris, 2001)
• Circulation increased by 20% with table of
contents/summary (Faiks, 2007)
• Circulation increased 25% - 50% for materials over five
years old (Tosaka & Weng, 2011)
Tables of contents
increased discoverability
• Average table of contents added 20 times the number
of unique words as title alone.
Prevalence of Enriched Records
Tosaka & Weng, College & Research Libraries, v.72 no. 5 (2011):412-427.
Enhancement Services
Backstage
2843
Total records
enriched
Table of
2555
contents added
Summaries
1717
added
Other
n/a
Marcive
2167
1515
1445
282
One-month sample of new records for PSU.
Manual Addition of
Table of Contents data
Challenges include:
• Time involved.
• Will cataloging department cooperate?
• How will titles be selected?
• How deeply to transcribe?
• Who can/will edit records?
• Will records be shared?
Manual Addition of
Table of Contents data
Reformat Library of Congress data
Step 1: Copy data from Library of Congress
table of contents site. (CIP)
Manual Addition of
Table of Contents data
Reformat Library of Congress data
Step 2: Text reformatted using Notepad.
Manual Addition of
Table of Contents data
Transcription directly from item in hand.
Manual Addition of
Table of Contents data
Transcription directly from item in hand.
Table of contents field for
The Physics of Glaciers
Instructions online at:
www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/cataloging/training/maintenance/tocnotes.html
Manual Addition of
Table of Contents data
More complex table of contents
Manual Addition of
Table of Contents data
Transcription - More complex table of contents
Table of contents field for
History of Iron Technology in India
Manual Addition of
Table of Contents data
Transcription – Even more complex table of contents
Manual Addition of
Table of Contents data
Transcription – Even more complex table of contents
Requires multiple 505 [contents] fields
Table of contents field for
Groundwater and Climate in Africa
Other Considerations
Will emerging discovery tools/systems make
content enrichment moot?
• Google Books project – snippets
• HathiTrust mission“to dramatically improve
access to library materials”
• Amazon – “Look inside”
• Web-scale discovery services – Summon,
WorldCat Local, etc.
Potential Impact on Access to
Geoscience Literature
Long-standing challenges of series and
analytics (or lack thereof).
Balance value of enhancement against
increase in direct access to digital version
thanks to surge of digitization projects for
government publications.
OCLC Report Conclusions
This study is far from the first to find that enrichment data
such as summaries and contents notes are important
contributors to end-user searching; that users want
enriched records; and that enriched records increase
usage of library materials.
Libraries need to work together to find ways to share the
costs of enriching discovery systems and keyword
indexes with this content.
Within the library community explore how to obtain or
produce enrichment content (tables of contents,
summaries, etc.) through data mining, the use of APIs,
partnerships with publishers and vendors, and
collaborative library projects
Future?
OCLC recommendations
Produce a guide for libraries that describes the options for adding
more enrichment data (tables of contents, summaries, etc.) to
bibliographic descriptions in library catalogs.
Compare the costs and benefits of a variety of approaches (manual
enrichment, data mining, vendor data, APIs, etc.).
Engage in some discussion within community, both
geoscience librarians as well as catalogers and others,
regarding the future of the catalog.