Transcript The network reconfigures discovery

Programs and research
The network reconfigures
discovery:
the importance of disclosure
Lorcan Dempsey
Ohio State University
Library 2.0 Conference
14 June 2007
Columbus, Oh
From home to here ….
Network user
environment
institutional
operating
environment
Part 1: Network use environment
Part 2: Operational environment
Part 3: Discovery and disclosure. The
example of the catalog
This is short
because you have
already heard a
lot of this
Part 1:
The network
use
environment
Getting
things
done
Workflow
Brand is the
new real estate
The rich get
richer
Libraries will need to plan for and build
services that fit new researcher work
habits, with an emphasis on the
flexibility and remixing of their content
and services. ….
… In this study we paid some
attention to the new world of informal
peer-to-peer communication within
the research community. The findings
are that researchers are adopting social
network technologies very fast and so
far they have done so on their own: the
library has effectively been bypassed.
Researchers use of academic libraries and their services. Swan A and Brown S
Starting an
information search
Respondents were asked to indicate, from a list of 16 electronic
resources, which they typically use to begin an information search.
Only 2% of college students start
their search at a library Web site.
Among total respondents, 84% of information
searches begin with a search engine and 1%
begin at a library Web site.
College Students
Trustworthiness of library sources
vs. search engines
Over half (53%) of college students indicate a similar trust of
search engines as with library resources.
Chris Beckett
http://www.scholinfo.com/presentations/2006/8/10/the-new-world-order-in-collection-development-the-commercial-perspective.html
The long tail
Systemwide
efficiences
Aggregation of supply
•Unified discovery
•Low transaction costs
Aggregation of demand
•Mobilize users
•Brand
Impact?
Database >
Website >
Flow
Get in the flow
Then: the user built their
workflow around the library
Now: the library must build its service
around the user workflow
Compete for attention
Then: resources were scarce and attention
was abundant
Now: attention is scarce and resources
are abundant
Website > workflow
Then: people consumed information
resources
Now: people construct digital identities
online:
gather, create, share
This is shortish
because I don’t
have a lot of time
Part 2:
The library
operational
environment
Personal
Workflow
RSS,
toolbars, ..
Network level
workflow
Google, …
Institutional
Workflow
Portals,
CMS, IR, …
Consumer environments
Management environment
Bought
Licensed
Digitized
Faculty&
students
Integrated
local user
environment?
Library web
presence
Resource
sharing, …
library
…
Aggregations
Resource sharing
Let’s limit this to
the catalog so that
we can get away
soon
Part 3:
From
discovery to
disclosure
 Local Discovery Environments
 Shared Discovery Environments
 Syndicated Discovery Environments
 Leveraged Discovery Environments
Remember: focus on catalog
Require
disclosure
Local Discovery environment
 Some (not necessarily aligned) motivations
Make data work harder
 Integrate access to locally managed resources
 Escape from ILS limitations







NCSU
Rochester
SOLR
Worldcat 2.0
Primo
Encore …
Making data
work
harder:
simple
search
followed by
rich
navigation
and
participation
Glancability
Some remarks
 How does MARC data play with other data


Subjects, authors, ..
Historic investment in structure?
 Duplicate cost?
 Relationship to Metasearch?
Shared discovery environment
 Increase impact


Create gravitational pull
Aggregate demand and supply
 Reduce costs
Some comments
 Integration of discovery to delivery becoming
essential
 A move to shared environments seems more
likely with increased ability to ‘view’ different
levels
 Increased gravitational pull: greater use of
collections

Growing evidence
Syndicated discovery experience
 Syndicate data or service or links
They found that Google is responsible
for referring 56% of the users of
HighWire journals, and our own study
shows that over 70% of researchers
use it routinely to find scholarly content.
Moreover, web search engine referrals
also appear to account for the vast
majority of accesses to institutional
repositories.
Van Orsdel L C and Born K
Researchers use of academic libraries and their services. Swan A and Brown S
Syndicating services
 RSS
 Portlets
 APIs, Protocol-based
 Projects
Sakailibrary
 …

Not as rapid as one might expect?
Susan Hollar - Inside the Course at Michigan
Sakaibrary:
Michigan
Indiana
Diane Dallis - Inside the Course at Indiana
Some remarks
 Syndication of data now common among data
providers
 Routing issue for non-unique materials
Resolution
 Worldcat

 Libraries exposing licensed content holdings
interesting

Google Scholar
 Service disclosure less common
APIs
 Web services
 Portlets
 HTML fragments – ‘search boxes’
 Toolbars
 Widgets, extensions, …

The Leveraged discovery experience
 In some ways the most interesting
 Use another discovery service to connect back to
your resources
 Compare to the situation with article databases
and resolvers
Some remarks
 Some of these are toy-like now, but indicate a
direction
 Increased capacity to ‘sense’ structure
(microformats) will improve ability.
So ….
 The library website is not the front door



We need to connect multiple discovery environments
to library fulfilment options
We need to put library resources in users’ workflow
We need to place library resources in places which
aggregate demand