Mohican 2012 Technical Services Conference

1. Transforming the OPAC:
Web 2.0, Mobile, and Discovery
Brian C. Gray (bcg8@case.edu) Mohican 2012

3. My Viewpoint = Not Cataloger
O 2nd time @ Mohican
O Team Leader Research Services:
Reference, collections, instruction,
faculty liaison duties
O Public-side
O OhioLINK Discovery Layer Taskforce
O Case discovery layer selection:
Summon

4. My Viewpoint = Not Cataloger
O Understand the systems, but not
all the details
O Engineer by training
O Efficiency
O How?
O Improvement potential

5. My Viewpoint = Not Cataloger
O KSU SLIS instruction
O LIS 60003 Information Technology for
Library & Information Professionals
O Workshop: Using Web 2.0 Principles to
Become Librarian and Educator 2.0
O Science Reference
O In-person & online-only

6. Goals for Today
O We cannot all know everything & we
get stuck in our day-to-day → Take
today to see new ideas
O Be in a safe place to question the
past, question the accepted, &
question the traditional
O Leave Mohican with a collaborator, an
idea, or both

7. Discovery vs. Federated
O Federated
O Conducts search against each
source
O Combines the results
O Limits metadata to the common
fields
O Relies on “connectors”

8. Discovery vs. Federated
O Discovery
O Typically, one big index –
think Google
O Pre-indexed, pre-faceted,
etc.
O Anything can be “ingested”

9. Librarians Struggle
with Discovery
O Most services do not contain databases,
but contain content
O Think books, journals, images instead of
databases
O Brings back lots of results
O Librarian teach start broad and limit but
still strive for perfect search strategies –
now reimagine search
O Results may be different every time

10. Librarians Struggle
with Discovery
O Search full-text so relevancy not as
obvious (but can be tweaked)
O Must rethink search processes to
utilize faceting to reduce results
O Some have the approach avoid
Google but now a Google-like tool for
libraries comes along

13. Case’s Experience
O Goal: Fast implementation
O Why?
O Get something to people so we
can get feedback for the future
O Student life cycle is short
O Result: Couple months

14. Case’s Experience
O Goal: Everywhere, anywhere

15. Case’s Experience
O Beta roll out
O Fix it on the fly (i.e. things can be
made better over time)
O No long-term commitments – Better
may come along
O Tool for all
Came just as we were phasing out a formal Reference
Desk & I believe made the changes more possible for
others to do Reference.

16. What We Learned:
The Unexpected
O Reference: Search styles and skills
had become stale & inflexible
O Playground for discovery & common
ground for discussion
O Bonus: Catalog cleanup
O Locations
O Duplication

17. What I Learned
O Small actionable team
O Experiment/pilot – Faculty &
students will support it and help
O Advocate with our vendors for
improvements & changes
O Partner/leverage vendors

18. Future because of Discovery?
OWhen does the
discovery layer become
the only public facing
interface?

19. Future because of Discovery?
OHow much content
can be just “turned
on” in a discovery
layer rather than
cataloged for the ILS?

20. Future because of Discovery?
OHas discovery become a
natural transition to
walking away from the
traditional ILS to a
cloud-based service?

21. Web 2.0 in Catalogs
O Adding new features to existing
catalogs
O Linking out to new sources of
information
O Trying to create environments
similar to successful processes,
websites, & styles

26. Gold Coast Libraries:
Full Screen Browsing

28. Mobile may be easier
than you think…
O Some examples:
O Summon
O LibraryThing
O LibGuides
O WorldCat
O Do you know about “mobile
emulators”?

29. LibraryThing LibGuides

30. Summon WorldCat

32. eXtensible Catalog
O “Open source, user-centered, next
generation software for libraries and
consortia. It comprises four software
components that can be used independently
to address a particular need or combined to
provide an end-to-end discovery system to
connect library users with resources.”
O University of Rochester

33. eXtensible Catalog:
User Interface
O “Drupal Toolkit integrates searchable library
metadata, ILS circulation services,
repository content and library website
content into a feature-rich web user
interface.”
O “Out-of-the-box search interface offers
faceted browsing with customizable facets. A
platform to build custom web applications
that integrate with library metadata and ILS
circulation services is also provided.”

34. eXtensible Catalog:
Metadata Management
O “Enables the XC user interface to present
FRBRized, faceted navigation across a range of
library resources. The toolkit aggregates
metadata from various silos, normalizes (cleans-
up) metadata of varying levels of quality, and
transform MARC and DC metadata into a
consistent format for use in the discovery layer.”
O “Presents an opportunity for libraries to apply
their expertise with creating and managing
metadata in a variety of web applications.”

35. eXtensible Catalog:
Connectivity
O “OAI Toolkit provides synchronization
with MARC metadata that is managed
by the ILS.”
O “NCIP Toolkit provides live circulation
status display, circulation forms
submission, and ILS authentication
for applications that work alongside
your ILS. “

37. Assessment, Statistics, &
Promotion
O How many of you tell your
story outside the library?
O How many of your users know
what happens behind the
scenes?

38. KSL’s Public Wow

39. KSL’s Public Wow
O http://library.case.edu/ksl/whoweare/statis
tics/publicwow.html

40. KSL’s Public Wow

41. KSL’s Public Wow

42. Areas of Growth for
Increased Library Value
O Open, accessible, & shared data
O Local content
O Data management
O Data synthesis
O Mashing, expanding, & creating new products
from existing information
O I do not see any library catalogs that support
these areas except for displaying a record to a
finding aid.

43. Final Thoughts
O “Play”, experiment, & pilot
O Advocate for vendors to
make changes
O Leverage the vendors to
work for you

44. Final Thoughts
O “Thinking outside the box” has
resulted in bringing features into
our OPACS but imagine starting
brand new as some of the
discovery tools have
O Lets stop retrofitting

45. Final Thoughts
O Who will build the next
catalog alternative?
O Who are the players?
O How long can we keep
upgrading & continue to lose
users to new alternatives?

46. Final Thoughts
Just think…
O Imagine Google bought an
existing OPAC - Can you imagine
them just trying to fix it?
O Imagine if Amazon was the
library catalog – not the catalog
like Amazon.

47. Brian C. Gray
O Kelvin Smith Library, Case Western
Reserve University
O Team Leader, Research Services
O Librarian: Chemical Engineering and
Macromolecular Science &
Engineering
O Email: brian.c.gray@case.edu
O http://www.slideshare.net/bcg8