Touching base, what I am doing

Apologies for my slackness in writing lately. I am quite literally drowning in the CMS conversion. I'd like to thank the Ninjas and especially Sharon Bryan for their work knocking off the last pointy edges before a 'real' trial publish.

One thing I think all the ninjas agree on is that we really need to do a review of our site. Because the site has had bits tacked on in an 'as needs' basis we are finding lots of content that works on its own but not as a coordinated part of the library site. There is massive duplication, particularly of contact information. There also a lot of broken internal links as things like the new book lists have been moved but older pages links to them have slipped through the cracks - and to add to the embarrassment those broken links seem to have been on display for literally years.

Again due to the way the site has evolved over time there is little consistency of 'voice' or format (every form looks different).

I think the two big areas for us to focus on post launch are:

1. A review (with a lot of observational user studies) and a redesign with a view to making the site user-centric based on what we learn from the review
2. A commitment to quality assurance, making the existing content meet standards for accessibility, usability, voice, granularity, consistency, currency, relevance; and building mechanisms (both automated and organisational) to ensure new content meets those standards.

We also have a massive link checking job ahead of us in the subject guides, and I think it's time we started thinking about how we approach resource discovery in our subject disciplines.

I also expect the results of the Client Survey to feed into the areas identified as most important to our clients.

A little factoid I calculated is that 100 of our 6000+ pages generate 92% of our hits - perhaps our long tail is a little too long?

I'm also doing the preliminary design of our 360 Search/Link implementation, helping out with the Library Planning Day committee, and organising the impending Horizon upgrade (3rd of October). If I die I like dark red roses and donations to Amnesty International and Medecins Sans Frontieres.

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.

Link Resolver statistics and Collection Building : one small step?

I've just been perusing the monthly SFX statistics that I've set up as automatic monthly emails and decided to actually try doing something with the stats rather than just record them. Great job for a Friday.

The particular stats I played with today are the 'Books accessed via SFX ranked by use'. These stats indicate which books were returned in searches (both within Metalib and in the database UIs we've embedded the SFX service) which in turn attracted a client's attention enough to click on 'Find It'. The stats show how many times this this happened for each ISBN.

I reasoned that this data could be a useful indicator of both the titles and subject areas clients are searching for which in turn would aid acquisitions decisions by:

• Identifying high demand titles not in the collection
• Highlighting subject areas under represented in the collection
• Giving liaison librarians an insight into the information needs of their clients

What the report doesn't show is whether we hold the item in any format, so a manual check of the catalogue is required. The only identifying metadata for the title available is ISBN.

I decided to check all the ISBNs that had more than two requests and if they were not part of the JCU collection list the bibliographic details with a link to more information (either from a publisher, vendor or Google Books) which would further aid the decision to purchase or not.

Two side points:

• About 40% of the requests had no ISBN, making them impossible trace just using the report
• The clickthrough rates for books are about half what we get for journal articles
  

It's just a trial to gauge its perceived utility with the liaison librarians and a bunch of improvements could be made. For example, I'd like to either break it into faculties/schools.

I'm about to send it to the liaison librarians to see what they think. Maybe they'll even comment in this blog

Open Source Integrated Library Management Systems

I necessarily subscribe to a bunch of lists and feeds. The flow can be overwhelming but if you get into a simple scanning routine you notice patterns in the ebb and flow of the communal mind that is the web. In addition I actually talk to you about issues and ideas. For this post I thought I just mention some of the things that have caught my eye/mind recently.

Open Source Integrated Library Management Systems are a key watch topic with QULOC-ICT. The two main systems are Evergreen and Koha the general feeling is that these systems don't have the full range of modules the commercial providers have but they do work. On web4lib there has been a lot discussion not about the software itself but hiring third parties to maintain and develop it.

The software is free but support is not. But, unlike the pricing model the commercial providers use (an annual license/maintenance fee that has no connection with what you actually get, and additional costs for customised development) you negotiate with the third party when you want something done or get quotes from a number of third parties.

Sidebar: Talk to an ex-sales person from one the big ILMS providers and to find some truly bizarre formulas for calculating costs (which are usually manipulated so that a pre-decided on price is the answer): number of campuses, students, staff, books and multiply, divide, add, subtract, sine, cosine, tangent them in an order of their choosing.

Increasingly libraries are dipping their toes in the Open Source Software (OSS) water by using it as an additional layer or view to existing data stores, for example the NLA use of VuFind as an alternative OPAC, Charles Darwin University is experimenting with it as well.

A number of libraries have announced an actual dive into the water. In the last month the following libraries have gone KOHA:

• Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
• Butte Silver Bow Public Library
• Fort Wayne Museum of Art
• Birmingham Museum of Art
• Highland Park Public Library
• Salinas Public Library
• Polytechnic University

And these libraries have gone with Evergreen recently:

• Pemberton (B.C.) Public Library
• Houston Public Library in British Columbia
• Marshall Public Library
• Whistler Public Library
• Kent County, Maryland, Public Library
• University of Prince Edward Island's Robertson Library

As more libraries move to open source opportunities open up for competitors for Equinox (Evergreen), LibLime (Koha) and Media Flex (OPALS).

We are currently planning to upgrade Horizon to 7.4.1 in the mid-semester break, more information as we approach that period.

Further reading

The JISC review: Library Management Systems: Investing wisely in a period of disruptive change
Library Journal article: Automation System Marketplace 2008: Opportunity Out of Turmoil

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.

Academic Live and Live Books fade away

Go away for a couple of months and everything changes.

On the 23rd of May 2008 Microsoft announced that it was pulling the plug on Live Search Academic and Live Search Books, two products it launched as direct competition for Google Scholar and Google Books respectively.

Though never as widely used as their Google counterparts they were useful products and it is sad to see the work done in digitising 750,000 books and indexing 80,000,000 journal articles disappear from the information retrieval landscape.

In the announcement Satya Nadella, Senior vice president search, portal and advertising at Microsoft states that it is a business decision as they have decided to "focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers". The announcement states that the company does not see a sustainable business model for the services in the current environment.

The existing indexes will be merged into the Live Search engine http://search.live.com/

Link Resolver stats overview for first half of 2008

Just a brief glimpse of the usage statistics for SFX year-to-date. See the full reports on the Library Intranet (JustUs), password required.

Requests 207247 (number of clicks on 'Find It' button) - up 15% on 2007

Click Throughs 161891 (the number of times Link Resolver either found an e-holding OR user clicked on the 'Search Catalogue' link when no e-holding found) - up 11% on 2007

The databases providing the most link resolution requests are:

• CINAHL
• PsycInfo
• Google Scholar
• Web of Knowledge/Web of Science
• Medline

In addition to ejournal holdings our link resolver initiated 23850 catalogue searches and delivered 2974 ebooks

The top epublishers were:

• Elsevier
• Gale
• Proquest
• Blackwell
• Free Ejournals
• Informaworld
• Springer
• Wiley
• Ovid
• Sage

The five most popular journals were:

• Marine ecology progress series
• The Australian journal of rural health
• Aquaculture
• Science
• Marine biology

Approximately 70% of requests resulted in a fulltext service