Summon beta soft launched at JCU

We soft-launched Summon, branded as One Search, late last week. Still poring over issues and reporting them to Serials Solutions, and learning a lot more about the product than we did, and scratching our heads about other things.

At the user group post-VALA a lot of other institutions reported resistance from liaison librarians, something I haven't had to deal with here, although some are quick to point out failings I don't see that as a bad thing, you can't address issues you're not away of. One reaction that I think could be wrongly interpreted as resistance, is the realisation that Summon is not universal in anything it does and is not meant to be the be all and end all of advanced research (at least not yet). I see it as a big step towards getting new researchers over the hump of where and how to start searching, and not a bad way of getting an overview of what's available in a subject area (the way some academics use Google). For more focused advanced research that requires comprehensiveness there are other tools, but by the time you need them hopefully you more comfortable with search and retrieval and have a relationship with your liaison librarian.

Each question I send to the client center opens my eyes a little more and reminds me of the 'cultural' differences between Ex Libris and Serials Solutions (sort of like McDonalds vs Burger King) I reported on back when reviewing our AARLIN participation. EL were a lot more open, focussed on client contribution and consensus, reporting issues widely, SS keep that sort of communication narrow channel between you and them. Both are responsive and there are pluses to both models and SS are widening those channels with reps responding on mailing lists which is good to see.

Things I've learned:

• Summon doesn't use Ulrich's to identify peer-reviewed journals (yet), so using that filter will exclude some journals that are peer-reviewed.
• If Summon doesn't get a response in 4 seconds from your catalogue it will have a link to the catalogue labelled 'Check availability' rather than the branch and loan status.
• Records disappear and come back again, I imagine because of re-ingestion of existing records
• Our library news item announcing it only inspired two pieces of feedback, clearly marketing is our next hurdle

I'm getting positive secondhand feedback from the liaison librarians in Cairns, so I live in hope. And SS are currently ingesting our institutional repository records (ResearchOnline@JCU).

Still quiet on the discovery layer front!

Summon @ JCU or something else?

A lot has been going on behind the scenes with our Summon implementation. Serials Solutions report we are on track for a mid-February release.

Through the discussion list I've made contact with two other Horizon using 'Summoners', Dave Pattern at Hudddersfield and Emily Lynema from North Carolina State, whose brains I'm hoping to mercilessly pick in developing a regime of extracting deletions, additions and changes to Horizon records to update Summon.

As I've done all I can until SS get back to us with something to tweak the only outstanding task is naming the service. It's been briefly discussed at Library Management Committee.


So what are our options?

1. Call it Summon (my quick hunt of launched Summon sites shows about 80% of institutions have done this) .
   Pro: people moving between institutions will know what it is.
   Con: To the uninitiated Summon doesn't mean anything (but neither did Google)
   
2. Call it X Search (the name we currently have for our federated search tool)
   Pro: institutional continuity.
   Con: Meaningless to new members of our community
   
3. Call it something else.
   Pro: we could choose something self-explanatory.
   Con: What?

I personally have reservations about naming things that have little or nothing to with the function or service the thing provided. I think every university catalogue should be called 'the catalogue', every intranet should be called 'the intranet'. But I fall down when I think of a meaningful name for 'federated searching' or 'discovery layer' or 'web scale discovery tool'.

As a working title I've gone with One Search because Serials Solutions need to stick something in place of 'name' and it's easily changed.

In the workroom we've had a couple of brainstorming sessions with an emphasis on silliness, the results included:

• JCUgle (pronounced J Koogle)
  
• Thing that you must search if you dont want to fail
• Get a HD
• Spare Brain
• Better Than Google
• Everything@JCU
  

As you can see I am desperate need of better suggestions! Marks will be deducted for:

• Anything prefixed by a lower case letter (I'm over iThis, eThat, mTheother, xAnything)
• Joined up words with mixed case (they are so NinetiesSpeak)
• Trendy words and catchphrases (they don't stay fully sick for long, dude)

Bonus points for:

• Brevity
• Meaning

Please post your suggestions urgently!

JCU is being Summon'd

It's official, we've signed up for Summon and I'm really looking forward to the end product, if not the work that has to be done to get there.

I quite proud that a smallish regional university library like ours has seen the potential of the product even in it's early days, and this is one of those rare times where the benefits have made early adoption the right choice.

I found this small blogpost today from Jonathan Miller the director of Olin Library and it filled my heart with good cheer heading into the festive season, and I quote:

"Half way through the meeting a professor says, "By the way, that R-Search is great. My students love it. I love it!"

This doesn't often happen with other library services ...."

Discovery layers article

From the Chronicle of Higher Education 'After Losing Users in Catalogs, Libraries Find Better Search Software' an overview of 'the problem with catalogues' - and Summon gets a mention eventually.

Great quote from the article:

"a graduate student specializing in early American history, once had such a hard time finding materials that she titled a bibliography "Meager Fruits of an Ongoing Fight With Virgo [the U of Virginia's catalogue]."

Summon to replace X Seach?

First up apologies for the lack of posts lately - I've been busy reading a book about improving your blog

Because I have more formal ways of telling you what's happening I'm going to concentrate on using this blog on scanning the horizon for those who want to see what might be coming over the hill and on things that are making me ponder in a brave attempt to get you to ponder with me too.

Currently I'm looking at Summon, the latest offering from Serials Solutions. I urge you to look at it on the early adopter sites and tell me if it excites you as much as it excites me:

• http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/home/find/summon/
• http://www.library.unisa.edu.au/
• http://www.liv.ac.uk/library/e-library/summon.html
• http://www.gvsu.edu/library/

Basically Summon is search engine & metadata harvester. Serials Solutions call it a 'web scale discovery tool' and in library tech talk it fits in the spectrum of 'Resource Discovery Layers'. Sluicing off the jargon it is like having a Google searching your library collections. All your collections: Catalogue, institutional repository (eprints) AND your subscription econtent.

It is not a federated search engine like X Search (360 Search). It does not translate your search into other formats and submit them to lots of search engines, then wait for the all the results to come back and process them and display them to you. Because it has it's own index it's quick (almost Google quick). You search it like Google too: one search box, and the same syntax for phrases, ANDs and NOTs.

All that is cool enough but don't forget what it's searching. Everything* you've got. Regardless of format or location. In one search. No more 'why can't I search for articles in the catalogue?' or 'what's the difference between Proquest 5000 and Expanded Academic Index?' No more scrolling through hundreds of databases with meaningless titles (ASABE Technical Library, Project Muse) wondering which one will return anything.

And that's only point one. I will circulate my proposal/information document to the Library Management Committee and through that forum to anyone interested. Please try it out on at least one of the example sites (you can do everything except view subscription content without logging in - yet another cool addition the list of why Summon is grabbing my attention.

Watch the promotional video


*Ok not quite everything, to search subscription eresources SS negotiates licensing agreements with publishers, and while they have literally hundreds of these agreements, with major publishers, and they are growing, there are some titles not yet included.

Horizon Unconference : where to from here

I'm at the end of day 2 of a three day 'unconference' at the University of Tasmania in chilly Hobart, where a group of Horizon using libraries have sent representatives to talk about what's the next ILS now that it's clear SirsiDynix will not reverse their decision to euthanise Horizon 8.

About 26 libraries are here. University of Tasmania are the organisers and drivers. They had three staff in the USA last year conducting an environmental scan (I'll make Rod Foley's reports available on the intranet - very interesting reading). One thing that strikes you immediately is the difference in resourcing between US and Australian libraries. One University with around the same number EFTSUs as JCU has 185 employees (with 11 dedicated to library IT).

As Di Worth said in opening the unconference, 'we won't come away with the answer' but I already feel that I have a much clearer handle on what the question is. Linda Luther asked the question 'What is an ILS really for?'

The proprietary vendors of ILS are surprisingly few in number (at least those in the University sector) and even more surprising is how old their offerings are; Endeavour is the youngest and first released in 1995. All the products have evolved but you wonder about the core assumptions in their initial design when the most recent was released the same year as Netscape 1.0

Warwick Cathro outlined the NLA's experience with OSS but focused mostly on the directions they are taking in evaluating the multitude of systems they have think about Service Oriented Architectures.

Ex Libris then presented their ILS and product suite and answered questions about migration paths. They stress their position as an innovator and Unified Resource Management (URM) was discussed as their next generation discovery layer.

Then it was off to the library staff room for welcome drinks and nibbles - nice couches well laid out kitchen and servery, and facing an atrium full of barwangs - better laid out than Cairns but doesn't have our view!

Open Source software has been bandied around a bit, Anthony Hornby had a very pragmatic overview of how you should approach Open Source - the same way you approach proprietary software - evaluate for best fit. He dispelled a bunch of myths about OSS, from the wildly evangelical to the demonising (and showed us the little funny below).



Anthony pointed out that even proprietary vendors relied on OSS (e.g. Java), and that we all use it every day (thing blogs like this one, or IM).

We were given overviews of Koha and Evergreen by brave souls who've installed and played with it in test environments (common theme: follow the installation instructions meticulously).

HES then presented, offering the group tools for future collaboration and collective action. JCU participates in HES for a number of systems e.g. our HR system, and we benefit from the negotiated agreement with Oracle.

Next was Serials Solutions, which held little new for me, until Summon got a mention, which is sort a competitor for URM but much closer to implementation. Basically it operates more like Google Scholar in that databases are harvested for metadata, removing federated search's Achille's heel; connection files and retrieval times. SS benefit from being part of the Cambridge Information Group which includes Proquest, Bowker and Ulrich's. Apparently they have an agreement with Thomson Gale to allow harvesting of the databases and many other larger publisher are either on board or soon will be.

SirsiDynix then made their presentation, revolving around Symphony, which looked quite cool. I admire SD staff, they've had so much flack from customers since the Horizon 8 death notice but they are still cheerfully plugging away. The word going around is that SD are focusing on the international market, and rumour says that's because the customer response to H8's death in the US was so vitriolic - but it might also have something to with it's ability to handle unicode making it usable in Asia.

Softlink (Liberty) then presented - they chiefly work in the specials and small publics sector and don't have any university customers in Australia.

The breaks are full of conversations between people asking each other 'what are you going to do?'

Friday we have LibaryThing, DA, Civica and Innovative Interfaces, before another all in library only session to finish up.

Most of the powerpoints will be made available, and I will be writing a more detailed report after cogitating a bit. I think this is a good time to think about our ILS as we are thinking a lot right now about how we do resource discovery with the CMS and 360 Search being launched in the last week and a bit of January (my blonde tips are getting bigger).

Another thing Anthony Hornby had in his powerpoint really tickled me - I think I'll make it my family crest:

The Virtual Library - where to next?

I was going to post about SirsiDynix releasing their Enterprise V1.0 product. I've read the media release and perused the web site at http://www.sirsidynix.com/Solutions/Products/portalsearch.php and I'm still not sure I see anything to get overly excited about. Enterprise is a layer that sits on top of the OPAC (in our case HIP) which provides a few bells & whistles, like faceted results analysis, profiles for specific user groups, some fuzzy searching logic, and a little web2ish content integration (cover images, for example).

It might be attractive to a library with a number of discrete collections, or a consortium, but it seems tied to physical collections and increasingly our collection development revolves around the virtual (ie electronic/digital).

I feel like we can probably stick with our current ILMS for two years before we'd enter a review phase about what we do next. Horizon is now a dead end, if stable, product (after the 7.4.1 upgrade in September). It will continue to be the chief management tool of our physical collections from acquisition to circulation at least until that review.

I think we need to step back and think about how all our resources can best be delivered to our clients and look for tools that allow us to do that, rather than acquiring systems and then trying to figure out how to make them do what we want.

In the last client survey the one area where we lost ground, admittedly not much, was in the 'virtual library' section. Personally I didn't find this a surprise even though I think the resources we provide are better than we have ever provided before. I believe the rapid acquisition of resources and entry points to those resources (think X Search, LearnJCU, Reserve Online, 30000+ ejournals subs, 300+ I&A/FT databases, numerous guides, VISA, LearningFast, remote access, library policies, rules and regs) has swamped an information architecture firmly rooted in a much less virtual information world.

It is time to seriously look at our approach, both in philosophy and technology. I believe we need a more client-centred and client/context-centred approach. I often ponder why we silo-off library materials and services from the rest of the students learning experience. Are we not a key part of the process that creates the perfect graduate? Why aren't our services seamlessly integrated with teaching materials, at the point where they are most relevant. For example why does a student who has logged into LearnJCU and selected a particular subject have to login again to Reserve Online and then enter the subject code to see the readings for the subject? We already know who they are and what subject they're doing. Why aren't the reading lists embedded in the course materials with links directly to the item's full text? I think we should be asking these questions.

Open Source competitor for Dewey

Tim Spalding of LibraryThing has made a call for volunteers to create an open source alternative for the Dewey Decimal Classification system. It seems Tim's ultimate aim is to have the LibraryThing 'collection' classified using this new system, apparently to allow users to 'browse' virtually.

The comments on the blog veer from the derogatory to heart-on-sleeve enthusiasm.

You can follow the discussions in the LibraryThing group: Build the Open Shelves Classification. So far the discussion seems to be struggling to get out of a DDC/LCC mindset, though some interesting ideas have been put forward. Personally I find that accommodating a one dimensional ordering (ie shelf ordering) is hampering the discussion and I think a more three dimensional approach would be more useful in the online context. It makes me think of faceted classification systems that I barely recall from an obscure part of my library degree a couple of decades ago.

What I find interesting is that LibraryThing senses a need for more structured than the folksonomy approach that is its signature. And in the same week that Web4Lib started talking about ChaCha, a search engine that combines human mediation with with search engines to give users 'answers rather than a list of links'. Does this signify a shift in the zeitgeist about the costs and benefits of human vs machine processing of information? Probably not. But it's a timely reminder that a trained human brain and structured information resources aren't yet anachronisms.

A new approach to web resource discovery

At JCU we've had static lists of subject-based web resources since the dawn of 'before my time'. This approach evolved directly from the 'Pathfinder' model I first saw as an undergrad circa 1989. A paper list of in-building (mostly) paper resources.

Now we have a electronic list of electronic resources with almost standard groupings like 'Databases', 'Ejournals', 'Associations & Organisations', 'General', 'Specific' etc. Over the years individual guides have mutated from the original template based on the nature of the subject and the preferences of the author.

These tools provide a menu of resources for the 'diner' to peruse over a leisurely lunch, rather than providing a drive through window for the student in a hurry. The choice to browse rather than search is often a product of need and time.

Browsing aids indepth knowledge (and often requires it).
Searching often satisfies an immediate need and requires less subject knowledge (particularly in assignments with set topics).

Can we provide one tool to support both needs?

The database section subject guides can also be an administrative burden. Many cite the same cross disciplinary databases, so when a name or IP address changes the edit has to be replicated in multiple files. Currently we store this information at least two other places:

1. The catalogue, which in turn generates the static A-Z listing on the web site
2. In X Search (the JCU implementation of Ex Libris' Metalib).
   

Conceivably it should also be stored in our ERM as well, although I'm told it currently isn't. It seems obvious that reducing data maintenance by having a central store and 'pulling' a list of relevant databases out of it dynamically and embedding them in the resource guide is preferable to maintaining multiple lists. And why not embed a search form in the subject guide that used federated searching to search those databases?

And if you are happy with that model can we transfer it to the other eresources currently listed in the resource guide pages? Could we create or use an existing database to manage/store web sites and draw on them to populate resource listings?

Well of course we could. To see how it might look take a look at the PHP/MySQL application PirateSource developed by the Joyner Library at East Carolina University, also used by Curtin University of Technology.

What's missing from PirateSource is the ability to search the resources listed as a job lot. Which leads me to the next bit of this spiel: Google Custom Search. With GCS you can tell google exactly which sites you want hits returned from, in effect an expansion of using Google to search one site using the 'site:xxxx.edu.au' restriction.

As an experiment I've created a GCS that restricts to the websites listed on our Accounting & Finance Guide (does not include the databases, ejournals or ebooks listed, only the web sites in the last four categories), take it for a spin. The results can also be 'iframed' inside an institutional page - which I haven't done at the time of writing, but may have done by the time of reading.

Of course we are then back to maintaining separate lists of web resources, aren't we? Not necessarily. If we could store all those web sites in ERM, with enough metadata to retrieve them, and if the Serials Solutions API is up to it, we could have one central database of resources that could populate subject guides dynamically with appropriate resources, and we could even have an option to search the retrieved resources simultaneously.

Except searching databases, ejournals and ebooks would be one federated search and all other web resources would be another federated search (Google Custom Search). The multitude of subject specific GCSs would have to maintained semi manually - a cut and paste from of the selectedURLs (one to a line) into the GCS 'Sites to search' box.

I propose all this as a talking point sparked by Helen Hooper showing me Curtin's subject guides. If you are interested in learning more please let me know.