Transcript Libraries in the age of Amazoogle: some issues and responses: the example of OpenWorldCat Lorcan Dempsey JISC/CNI Conference, 8/9 June 2004

Libraries in the age of Amazoogle:
some issues and responses: the
example of OpenWorldCat
Lorcan Dempsey
JISC/CNI Conference, 8/9 June 2004
Scan chapter .. Social landscape
• The ‘Amazoogle’ effect
• Value
• The fabric of
collaboration
• Generations
‘The future is
here. It's just
not evenly
distributed yet’
William Gibson
Overview …
The Amazoogle effect
• Four perceived user attributes?
–
–
–
–
Comprehensive
Accessible
Immediate gratification
‘Followability’ of data
‘The net generation doesn’t love a wall’
Eric Childress
The Amazoogle effect
• Creating network application platforms
– Computational hubs in a loosely coupled world
– E-bay, Google, Amazon, Mapquest, …
“Search engine mindshare”
John Regazzi
“In a survey for this lecture,
librarians and scientists were
asked to name the top scientific
and medical search resources
that they use or are aware
of. The difference is startling.”
• Scientists:
– Google
– Yahoo
– PubMed
• Librarians:
– Science Direct
– ISI Web of Science
– MedLine
Source: John Regazzi,
The Battle for Mindshare: A battle beyond access and retrieval
http://www.nfais.org/publications/mc_lecture_2004.htm
‘Burn the catalog’
“Electronic
wherever
youIgo
in thewe’d
academic
“I’mcatalogs,
to the point
where
think
be better off
world, have become a horrible crazy-quilt assemblage
to just utterly erase our existing academic
of incompatible interfaces and vendor-constrained
catalogs and forget about backwardslistings. Working through […] a relatively small
compatibility, lock all the vendors and librarians
collection, you still have to navigate at least five
and scholars together in a room, and make them
completely different interfaces for searching. Historical
hammer out electronic research tools that are
epochs of data collection and cataloguing lie indigestibly
Amazon-plus, Amazon without the intent to sell
atop one another.”
books but with the intent of guiding users of all
Tim Burke, Swarthmore
kinds to the books and articles and materials that
they ought to find, a catalog that is a partner
rather than an obstacle in the making and
tracking of knowledge. ”
Tim Burke, Swarthmore
Open WorldCat
• Facilitate the rendezvous of users and library
services on the web
• Surface the library where the users are
Some examples
• Book vendors and bibliographies
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Click in
presentation
mode to go
through to
examples
ABE Books
ABAA
Alibris
HCBIB
BookPage
• Search engines (pilot with 2M records exposed as web
pages for harvesting)
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Google
Yahoo!
Try a search for:
A history of caricature and grotesque in literature and art
Example 1: Non-IP-authenticated user
User enters ‘uk’
User selects
(Non-IP-authenticated)
Example 2: IP-authenticated user
User enters ‘uk’
If the user’s IP address is recognized
and can be mapped to a FirstSearch
account, we will show fulfillment links
that are active for that account.
See next slide for openURL results
(IP-authenticated)
See next slide for click results
(Results from openURL resolver)
(Results from clicking “UNIcat Web OPAC”)
Open WorldCat Architecture
WorldCat , Additional collections can be added to Worldcatlibraries
domain
Metadata
OCLC will use tools such as xISBN and FRBR models to
organize WorldCat public views suitable for low precision access
Schemas and
Vocabularies
OCLC Developed Geo-locator services to matches users to
extensive FirstSearch WorldCat institution and user profiles
OCLC Uses Host of Authentication and Authorization tools
to progressively match content to rights
OCLC Organizes WorldCat content in model
suitable for harvesting, anticipate unique
aspects of various portals
Google, Yahoo and Book Vendors
Aggregators
Portals
Profiles and
Relationships
Content
Owner
Access
Distribution, Search,
Display
Organization and
Presentation
Google and Yahoo! timeline
8/14/03:
Google
contract
signed
10/22/03:
Google harvests
150,000 records
9/19/03:
Google given
go-ahead to
harvest records
Jan.’04:
32,000 inbound
links logged
(SSO)
Dec.’03:
Records begin to
appear in Google;
800 inbound-links
logged (searchsite-originating
[SSO])
5/21/04:
Yahoo
contract
signed
Mar.’04:
109,000 inbound
links logged
(SSO)
May’04:
725,000 inbound
links logged
(SSO)
5/28/04:
Yahoo
harvests
records
6/6/04:
Yahoo
completes
indexing of
2 million WC
records
Search Engine History
Traffic
2,452,521
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
725,545
1,000,000
500,000
800
32,064 42,659
108,971
Jan
Mar
315,988
0
Dec
Feb
Apr
May
Jun*
Off Click Dispersion
*Full record
displays.
Projected
for June.
2%
17%
Full Text
1%
7%
4%
0%
69%
ILL Request Form
Library Information Page
Library's Map Page
netLibrary
OPAC Links
OpenURL Resolver
Mechanics
• Google. Crawls web pages.
• Yahoo. Pulls file in IDIF (Inktomi Data
Interchange Format)
Next steps …
• Expose all of WorldCat
– 54M ‘titles’
– 1B ‘holdings’
• Expose other data
– ‘hosted data’
– ContentDM collections
– Other harvested collections
• Enrich services available at rendezvous
page
Attributes
• Leverage OCLC ‘platform’
• Uniquely well-placed to broker many
(searchers) to many (libraries) relationship
• Focus on increasing value and visibility of
member libraries.