Transcript Slide 1

Unbundling the ILS:
Deploying an e-commerce
catalog search solution
Andrew Pace & Emily Lynema
NCSU Libraries
April 12, 2006
What we will cover:
Online catalog: the problem
 Brief environmental scan
 Implementation: team, timeline, technology
 Demo
 Usability, statistical results, relevance study
 So what?
 Future plans
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Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
What ILS Catalogs Do Well…
(liberally stolen from Roy Tennant)
Inventory control: What and where
 Known item searching
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“To enable a person to find a
book of which either is known:
author, title, or subject.”
- Charles Cutter, Rules for Catalogs
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
What ILS Catalogs Don’t do Well…
(liberally stolen from Roy Tennant)
Any search other than known item
 Known item searching
 Anything other than books and journals
 Logical groupings of results (e.g. FRBR)
 Faceted browsing
 Relevance ranking
 Sideways searching (suggestions,
expansion of searches and search targets)
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Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Endeca purchase decision
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Lots of topical searches and poor subject
access
– Keyword gives too many or too few results –
leads to general distrust
– Misunderstanding of authority headings
No relevancy ranking of results
 Needed more responsiveness (speed)
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Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
NextGen Library Search Tools
The Next Generation catalog: more than just a facelift
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RedLightGreen (RLG)
OCLC Fictionfinder
Vivisimo clustered search
Aquabrowser visual context
Endeca Guided Navigation
Innovative Interfaces “OPAC Pro”
Ex Libris “Primo”
Polaris, AJAX-Enabled OPAC
SirsiDynix Enterprise Portal System, FAST
Talis, et alWeb Services
OCLC Custom Worldcat
Georgia Pines and the Library 2.0 Bandwagon
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Implementation Team
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7 representative team members
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Andrew Pace, Information Technology, Chair
Cindy Levine, Research and Information Services
Emily Lynema, Info. Tech., ex officio (tech lead)
Erik Moore, Info. Tech., ex officio (ILS librarian)
Charley Pennell, Metadata and Cataloging
Shirley Rodgers, Information Technology
Tito Sierra, Digital Library Initiatives
Timeline
– License / negotiation: Spring 2005
– Acquire: Summer 2005
– Implementation: August 2005 – January 12, 2006
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Technical Overview
Endeca ProFind co-exists with SirsiDynix
Unicorn ILS and Web2 online catalog.
 Endeca indexes MARC records exported
from Unicorn.
 Index is refreshed nightly with records
added/updated during previous day.
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Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Endeca ProFind Overview
Endeca ProFind
NCSU exports
and reformats
Data
Foundry
Parse text
files
Raw MARC
data
Navigation
Engine
Indices
Flat text
files
HTTP
HTTP
Client
browser
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
NCSU Web
Application
Endeca ProFind Overview
Offline - Nightly
NCSU exports
and reformats
Data
Foundry
Parse text
files
Raw MARC
data
Navigation
Engine
Indices
Flat text
files
HTTP
HTTP
Client
browser
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
NCSU Web
Application
Endeca ProFind Overview
Always Online
NCSU exports
and reformats
Data
Foundry
Parse text
files
Raw MARC
data
Navigation
Engine
Indices
Flat text
files
HTTP
HTTP
Client
browser
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
NCSU Web
Application
Integrating Endeca
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Endeca doesn’t understand MARC data / MARC-8
character encoding – translate to UTF-8 text files
Each night a script updates the data indexed by Endeca:
– Exports updated or new MARC records from Unicorn.
– Reformats and merges these records with those already indexed.
– Starts Endeca re-index – completely rebuilding index for the
catalog.
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Process requires about 7 hours.
Retain Web2 OPAC for some functionality
– Authority searching - known items and cross-references
– Detailed record pages – how to make Endeca -> Web2 link?
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Quick Demo
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http://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Some User Reaction
“This is absolutely the coolest thing I've seen all
century.”
- Will Owen, Head of Systems (UNC Libraries)
“Also, I'm really digging the new NCSU library catalog.
Very nice."
- Educause staff (non-librarian)
“The new Endeca system is incredible. It would be
difficult to exaggerate how much better it is than our
old online card catalog (and therefore that of most
other universities). I've found myself searching the
catalog just for fun, whereas before it was a chore to
find what I needed.”
- NCSU Undergrad, Statistics
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Some Search Statistics
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
(March 2006)
Searches by Search Key
80000
74971
Requests
60000
40000
32776
20000
13563
9872
5838
1141
0
Keyword
ISBN
Title
Author
Search Key
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Subject
Multi-Field
Some Navigation Statistics
(March 2006)
Navigation by Dimensions
Availability
6790
LC Classification
49931
Subject: Topic
44197
Dimension
Subject: Genre
17720
Format
20867
23291
Library
13607
Subject: Region
7451
Subject: Era
8653
Language
17939
Author
0
20000
40000
Requests
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
60000
Other interesting tidbits…
(March 2006)
3.6% of all searches had spelling
corrected automatically
 2.6% of all searches had alternate spelling
suggestions
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Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Usability Testing Trends I
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10 undergraduate students
– 5 with Endeca catalog
– 5 with old Web2 OPAC
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Endeca performed as well as OPAC for known-item
searching
– 89% Endeca tasks completed ‘easily’ (8/9)
– 71% OPAC tasks completed ‘easily’ (15/21)
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Endeca performs better than OPAC for topical searching
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61% Endeca tasks completed ‘easily’ (19/31)
3% Endeca tasks completed as ‘hard’ (1/31)
33% OPAC tasks completed ‘easily’ (13/39)
26% OPAC tasks completed as ‘hard’ (10/39)
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Usability Testing Trends II
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Relevance *most* important
– “Once I scroll through a page, I get pretty discouraged about
the results...”
Web2 OPAC participant looking for resources on cat health
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‘Keyword’ term less intuitive / trusted than ‘Subject’ and
‘Title’
– “[I used] Keyword in Title because that’s what I want the book
to be mainly referring to. But I also could’ve went Keyword in
Subject. But if I’d have went Keyword Anywhere it would have
had too big of a field to look through.”
Web2 OPAC participant looking for resources on gene therapy
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When found, dimensions seem intuitive and useful
‘Did you mean’ seems intuitive
Students don’t necessarily treat the catalog like Google!
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
A study in relevance
Are search results in Endeca more likely to
be relevant to a user’s query than search
results in Web2 OPAC?
 100 topical user searches from 1 month in
fall 2005
 How many of top 5 results relevant?
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– 51% relevant in Web2 OPAC; 31 no hits
– 69% relevant in Endeca catalog; 12 no hits
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Relevance defined
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Relevance ranking in Endeca – select from a
variety of modules and order them based on
importance.
Relevance most important in Keyword
Anywhere - searches all fields.
At NCSU…
1. Original query term(s) (no thesaurus, stemming,
spell correction)
2. Exact phrase match
3. Field ranking (Title higher than Author higher than
Table of Contents)
4. Number of fields that contain term(s) …
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
So what? It’s still just a catalog
The library systems puzzle
 Reversal of fortune
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Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
The library system puzzle
Serials
A&I / FT DBs
Catalog
Web
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
The library system puzzle
Serials
A&I / FT DBs
Metasearch
ERM Systems
GS
Catalog
Guided
Navigation
Digital
Repositories
Web
Legacy ILS
IR
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Reversal of fortune
OLD SEARCH MODEL
NEW SEARCH MODEL
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Future Plans
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Ongoing tweaks:
– Continued usability testing
– Relevance ranking algorithms & spell correction thresholds
– Additional browsing options
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Endeca 2.0 ideas
– FRBR-ized display
– Discussions with OCLC regarding FAST (Faceted Access to
Subject Terms) and FRBR
– Patron-generated refinements (folksonomies?)
– Enrich records with supplemental Web Services content –
more usable TOCs, book reviews, etc.
– The death of authority searching (?)
– More integration with QuickSearch, other data repositories,
and third-party discovery tools
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution
Thanks
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/endeca
Andrew Pace, Head, IT
[email protected]
Emily Lynema, Systems Librarian for Digital Projects
[email protected]
Digital Library Federation Forum, April 12, 2006
Unbundling the ILS: Deploying an e-commerce catalog search solution