Transcript Prospector Update

How Do ERMs Improve
the User Experience?
George Machovec
Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries
http://grweb.coalliance.org
303-759-3399
[email protected]
September 2007
The Problem
Libraries are spending increasing amounts on
electronic resources
Patrons and librarians are unable to find many of
these resources (many not cataloged)
We have purchased access to many full-text
resources…we just don’t know what & where!
Full-text within aggregations are especially
difficult to find
How do you define your ERMS?
Just subscriptions management?
The broader definition?
Subscriptions management
Link resolution
A-Z services
Content analysis
Who Are We?
Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries
A non-profit consortium of 12 libraries
founded in 1974. 501c3
History of innovation
CARL ILS (sold in 1995) – now TLC
UnCover (sold in 1995) – now Ingenta
Who Are We?
Member of ICOLC
We do standard consortial stuff with a twist
Database licensing, shared collection
development
Data hosting Software development (e.g. Gold
Rush, Prospector, Fedora Digital Repository,
The Charleston Advisor)
Operates over 20 servers
What Do Patrons Want?
“I just want everything I want, when I want it” –
my nephew when he was 5 years old
Are your users any different?
What Do Patrons Want?
Patrons don’t care about you’re the details of your
services unless they are not working
For the most part our ERMS should be invisible
like plumbing….but it better work
Patrons don’t care about how much you pay or
who is the vendor
For the most part patrons don’t care about the
“terms and conditions” of products and services
Trends
The “hot” solution a couple of years ago
was metasearch/federated solutions.
The new hot trend is for libraries overlay
suites of key resources with search and
discovery tools
Trends
Search and discovery tools include commercial
and open source soutions such as:
Open source: Lucene, SOLR, VuFind, etc.
Commercial: Aquabrowser, Endeca, Encore, Primo, etc
Hosted: OCLC WorldCat Local
What are you putting under your big
umbrella?
Trends
Why the “big umbrella”
Super fast response time (like Google)
Great control over look and feel including tag
clouds, graphical representation, better screen
layout, etc.
Wonderful faceting and limiting options
Better integration with link resolvers, local
resources
Bring to the forefront important but lesser used
resources
Trends
Big umbrella examples
Univ of Chicago is putting AquaBrowser over its catalog, EAD
documents and SFX holdings
Ungava, National Research Council of Canada is using Lucene,
Carrot2, etc to index its catalog, its own publication and 1.7
million articles in biomedicine
Univ of Washington, WorldCat Local includes local catalog,
regional union catalog, OCLC holdings, ArticleFirst
Your ERM needs to be a part of such efforts
Trends
Extraction of holdings to share with
other services
Google Scholar
OCLC eSerials program (can take
metadata extracted from your ERMS in
GS format)
Gold Rush Offers
Initially developed by consortium in 2001
and offered to libraries outside of
consortium in 2003
Subscriptions Management
Link Resolution (OpenURL)
Public Searching interface (A-Z list)
Content Analysis
Where does GR fit in
the marketplace?
ERM marketplace as a continuum of
choices
Locally developed
Open Source products (e.g. CUFTS from
Simon Fraser for link resolution, content
comparison)
Non-profit – Gold Rush (Colorado Alliance)
Commercial (e.g. Serials Solutions, ILS
vendors, etc)
Observations
We were so early in marketplace for the
ERM component most of our libraries
didn’t know what to do with it
Knowledge Base
Gold Rush currently has >1500 title lists
Primary publishers
Aggregators
Indexing & abstracting services
Gold Rush contains many Open Access
(free) journals available as title lists
Building &
Maintenance
Constant updating of title lists
We supplement title lists from aggregators
and publishers with subject headings and
alternate titles
You can upload, modify, add or delete title
lists or individual titles at any time
Can load local serials holdings
Libraries
Selected libraries now using Gold Rush include:
• Several Colorado Alliance member libraries
• Several medical libraries in Oklahoma and Texas
• University of New Mexico (UNM), Santa Fe Institute, College
of Santa Fe
• Brigham Young University (main and law)
• University of Alaska
• Chicago Public Library
• Fort Collins Public Library
• Pacific Lutheran University
• and others
Staff
Knowledge Base
Chicago Public
Library
University of
New Mexico
Gold Rush
Central
Knowledge
Base
(Denver)
University of OK
Health Sciences
Select title lists from
central knowledge
base
Upload new content if
desired
Add, modify and
delete title lists or
content within lists as
needed
Technical Details
Operates on suite of Linux Servers
Industry standard MySQL, Perl and
ColdFusion
Current database
>1,500 databases, aggregators, publishers
ASP solution. Servers in Denver.
Key Challenges for
small organization
Create a great deal of local control
Ability to upload/download your own title lists
Ability to create or update lists on a one-by-one
basis
Ability to customize link resolver
Ability to customize A-Z
• Simple Web forms in a structured
• XML gateway to make the service anything you
want for better integration with other web services
Cool Features
Subscriptions Management
Starts with core template of fields
Allows libraries to add, remove and rename
fields and what goes in each tab (section).
Unlimited for all practical purposes
One click export of all subscription records into
Excel
Cool Features
Content comparisons
Compare two databases
Compare suites of databases
Detailed use statistics
Soon to Be Released Enhancement
Incident tracker
The ability to report problems for any service
A public messaging capability for users in the
public interface
Will be available from holdings, subscriptions
and via a direct URL for reference desk
Email notification to your staff
Reports for open and closed incidents
Partnership
We view Gold Rush as a collaboration
among participating libraries
We want to work with you to make the
project better and to met your needs as well
as those of others
Information
Full documentation available
Within the Gold Rush Staff Toolbox
At the Gold Rush informational Website at
http://grweb.coalliance.org
goldrush-l listserv
• Software updates
• Title list updates
• System maintenance and other general info
More Information
Contact Information:
(303) 759-3399 (phone)
(303) 759-3363 (fax)
[email protected]
Staff toolbox web report forms
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