Drupal & Summon: Keeping Article Discovery in the Library

Drupal & SummonKeeping Article Discovery in the Library
Ken Varnum
30 September 2011
LITA National Forum

About the Library Site
Launched 2 years ago
Running on Drupal 6 & Solr
Integrates discovery across
Catalog (our books, ebooks including HathiTrust)
Web content (stuff in Drupal)
LibGuides
Databases & Journals (metadata level)
Articles

Where We Were
Had Ex Libris’s Metalib federated search
Used X-Server (XML interface) to pull results into site
Decent results but
Slow
Inconsistent
Did I say slow?

What We Did
MLibrary signed up with Summon in July 2010
Launched our interface 9/27/2010
As with Summon’s hosted tool, anyone can search through our interface
Full text links are OpenURLs
UM authentication (off campus) / IP recognition (on campus) to get full text

About the Module
Developed by Albert Bertram at UM Library
Requires Summon API key to run
Development time about 10 weeks
Had experimented with Summon API for another search project
Built code from scratch as a Drupal module

What It Does
Replicates most functionality of Summon’s hosted site
Facets
Citations
One-click links to full text (where available)
360 Link is resolver
Each citation has a permalink for bookmarking/sharing

Module Status
Available as Drupal sandbox projecthttp://bit.ly/articlediscovery
“Real” modules must be reviewed & approved by Drupal gatekeepers
Can be slow
Iterative process
Minimal benefit (for us)

Module Contribution
Use GIT to download/update
Or download manually and install or upgrade
Anyone can download & install
Requirements
Drupal 6
Php5
phpapi client library rovidedby Serials Solutions
A couple pear packages
Summon API key

Search Results
Summon Native
Summon @ MLibrary (API)

Item Displays
Single Item in Summon
Single Item in API

Why Do It This Way?
Information world is a scary place (esp. for undergrads)
Provide as few starting points as possible
Keep users 'at home' as long as possible
Provide access to help as much as possible
Keep article discovery, catalog discovery, etc. in one context

Being in the Flow
Lorcan Dempsey defines “being in the flow” as:
the library needs to be in the user environment and not expect the user to find their way to the library environment
integration of library resources should not be seen as an end in itself but as a means to better integration with the user environment, with workflow.
“In the flow”, 6/24/2005http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/000688.html
Image courtesy of M.H Stephens

Staying in Our Own Flow
We *want* to be where the users are
But we need to start be being where we are.
We’re not always sure where “there” is
Our users’ flow often involves the library, so we also try to add extra value there
Provide auxiliary services within the local context
Not discourage users from going elsewhere, but providing reasons to stay

Flowing
Keep discovery in the library.
Send users to destination when they’ve found what they want
In practice:
LibGuide discovery in search & browse
Database, journal, & catalog discovery in our site
Integrate article discovery into site
Subject specialists integrated into search & browse
Provide other services around article discovery
Opportunity to learn about our user’s needs and behaviors

Drawbacks
Functionality of Summon’s native interface does not wholly show in API (they have some very talented coders)
Data does
Need to do extra work on our side to, for example, display Web of Science Citation Counts, or LibGuide author photos
API not 100% documented
We’re now “help desk” for other libraries

Effects
Eliminated Ex Libris’ Metalib & SFX
Changes to external database usage
Database discovery now in-site
Allows additional services
Favorites
Problem reporting & response

How It’s Being Used

Failure Reporting
Failure reporting
Ask for feedback at point of full-text click
Capture permalink, on- or off-campus status
Ask for symptoms and email for follow-up
Questions pass through ask-a-librarian service
Rapid updates to our holdings inSummon/360 Link

Failure Report by Data Source
423 reportsApril-September 2011

Add-On Services
Favorites
Custom searches
Semi-permalinks
Failure reporting

Where Next?
Continue to build services around discovery
Bring scoped searches to specific courses
Launch sharing of frequently used & saved resources among students in a class
Continue to study search & browse usage

Q&A
Ken Varnum
Web Systems Manager
University of Michigan Library
varnum@umich.edu
@varnum
lib.umich.edu/users/varnum

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Drupal & Summon: Keeping Article Discovery in the Library

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