Transcript Document
Building Bridges That Last Libraries and the Long Haul Roy Tennant Health Science Libraries in a Roy Tennant Networked World Our Users… • • • • • • Have lives Prefer to avoid pain Satisfice Seek efficiencies Are diverse Need one thing one day and another the next (their needs are also diverse) …Our Systems • Are many and offer few clues as to their purpose • Are often painful to use • Don’t offer everything our users expect • Tend to be tailored for expert users, not novices • Do not enable the kinds of interactions people have come to expect (e.g., save to a personal list, tag, easily add to social bookmarking site, etc.) Our Services… • Need serious review in light of user need • May not always be what we’ve done in the past • May be provided at the global level, group level, local level, or (most likely) by a combination • Will need to interact with many other services seamlessly Collections Mass Digitization • Google Library Project: – A number of large research libraries participating – Online at Google Books and Univ. of Michigan (theirs only) – Hundreds of thousands of books now online (an unknown number freely available) – Only searchable as a unified resource at Google Books • Open Content Alliance: – A number of libraries and sponsors (including Yahoo! and Microsoft) – Digitizing more slowly than Google, but steadily – Content online at the Internet Archive – Anyone can download all the files Implications for Libraries • With help from OCLC, possibility of all libraries becoming virtually huge • Online content may actually drive desire for print • Will require better methods of unifying access to print and digital • Increased need to split inventory control from discovery Discovery Melvyl WorldCat Local • Customized view of WorldCat.org that can serve as a library or library consortium’s local discovery service • In prototype now at the University of Washington, Peninsula Library System, etc. Open WorldCat • Over 90 million bib records • Over a billion physical items QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture. Customized WorldCat.org Local Branding Downloadable Search Box & Custom Ranking Inherits all features of WorldCat.org Faceted Browse Article Metadata Holdings: Local, Group, Global UW First Then Summit Rest of WorldCat Full record display Local Availability WorldCat Local Possibility • Instead of a group based on region, how about one based on topic affinity such as health sciences? – First level: local institution – Second level: a consortium of health science libraries – Third level: everything else Providing One-Stop Shopping • Most metasearch tools are optimized for bibliographic information… • …but health science libraries also need to provide access to a great deal of nonbibliographic sources Delivery Better Linking Through Chemistry • Our goal: get the user to what they want as quickly and as painlessly as possible • OpenURL resolvers are the beginning, not the end • Example: GUF GUF: Getting Users to Full-Text* • Title links on results screen lead to either: – Full-text (best) – Print-holdings information with map (2nd best) – Pre-filled interlibrary loan request form (worst) • Issues Addressed: – Follow long click-paths – Get stuck at dead-ends – Resubmit search midsession * This slide by David Lindahl, University of Rochester GUF Uses Other Services • • • • • Database of print journal holdings OpenURL resolver OCLC’S xISBN service DOI resolver Etc. Delivery • Must be available from any and all discovery locations, which means APIs for: – Holdings and availability – Licensed content (OpenURL resolver) – Requesting • Can we go all the way? Infrastructure The WorldCat Grid “OCLC is restructuring to make an information based grid that will power OCLC systems and services and also the systems and services of OCLC member libraries, associates, and partners.” WorldCat Grid Objectives • Expose data at the services layer – Make data work harder – Enable new kinds of services • Increase the value of being a OCLC member – More ways to access data – More business functions implemented at the service level In Summary • Our discovery systems must encompass more than what is in our buildings… • …be focused on user needs… • …and interoperate with other services on the network • Search results should be presented in terms of how easy/quickly they can be obtained • In particular, we must fix access to full-text • And address the ‘last mile’ of resource delivery What Works No Matter What • Start and end with your clientele • Learn the technologies available to you that are appropriate to your mission • Imaginatively apply those technologies to serve the unique needs of your users • Provide easy access to what they want, how and when they want it • Market those services well • Rinse and repeat