Collecting sharing and improving data: changing roles for librarians and users. April 2011

Rose Holley
Manager - Trove
National Library of Australia
1 st International Seminar of the Library of Galicia:
Digital Libraries
Santiago de Compostela 7-9 April 2011
Collecting, sharing and improving data:
Changing roles for librarians and users
[email_address]

Overview
Changes in librarianship 1907-2010.
New strategies for 2011.
National Library of Australia
Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program.
Trove single discovery service.

Women librarians 1907
Cite: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article14849217

Reference Librarian 1985

Arrival of the Internet 1998 Photo courtesy Genevieve Bell. Location: near Morgan, South Australia

Digitisation 2001
Millions of items digitised by cultural heritage institutions
Maps, photos, artworks, architectural plans, journals, archives, documents, books, newspapers, music.

Collaborative Delivery 2002

Single search vision (2002) Search and Navigation Interface Image Collections Websites Databases E-Journals Library Catalogues

Mass digitisation 2008

Digital Librarian 2010
Digitising resources.
Collecting/creating born digital objects.
Making resources accessible online.
Giving users online tools to interact with data, each other and support research.
Encouraging addition of knowledge to resources and creation of new resources.
Preserving digital objects.

The scope 2011….
Digital AND non digital
Galleries Libraries, archives, museums (GLAM)
Full-text (books, newspapers) GOOGLE
User-generated content Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia
Changing roles……
Technology has turned librarianship on its head:
Content can be created by anyone
Content can be described by anyone

Why libraries still matter
Long term preservation and access
No commercial motives
Universal access
“ Free for all”
ALWAYS and FOREVER….
Libraries have:
Librarians who can open doors with technology + Vast amounts of data
+ Information expertise

Who are the researchers?
Once content is liberated anyone can become a ‘researcher’.
The ‘ivory tower’ of gated and protected knowledge is gone.
‘ Formal’ scholars are replaced by the crowd in the cloud.
Today’s public are educated and engaged, demonstrated by their participation in citizen science projects.

What are their expectations?
“ Self service, satisfaction and seamlessness are definitive of information seekers expectations. Ease of use, convenience and availability are equally as important to information seekers as information quality and trustworthiness.”
2003 OCLC Environmental Scan
To interact with content,
other users and the
organisation (web 2.0)
To be able to annotate content
and contribute their own

Important Things
Connections
Linkages
Related
Context
Sharing
Re-purposing
Mashing
Adding
Giving users
Access to resources
Tools to do stuff
Freedom and choices
Ways to work collaboratively together

Where are the walls?
There are no walls only bridges:
People outside your building are accessing information within it.
People inside your building are accessing information from outside.
Changing use of spaces.
Mobilisation of services.

Change institutional thinking
“ Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash.” Harriet Rubin
Librarians are gatekeepers who need to focus on opening rather than closing doors….

New ways of developing services
Learning the ‘art of with’ Charles Leadbeater
Not to people
Not for people
WITH PEOPLE (USERS)
Public feedback should drive development of services:
CRITICAL, RELEVANT, INTERESTING, FUN
“ Libraries need to think they are leading a mass movement, not just serving a clientele.”

NLA Strategic Directions 2009-2011
“ We will explore new models for creating and sharing information and for collecting materials, including supporting the creation of knowledge by our users . “
(not just NLA resources… all Australian content)
“ The changing expectations of users that they will not be passive receivers of information, but rather contributors and participants in information services.”

2007 http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp

National Program and Content
Initial focus on major titles from each state and territory
‘ Regional ’ titles being contributed by libraries 2010 onwards
Coverage: published between 1803 – 1954
(out of copyright)
Start with 4 million pages
West Australian Northern Territory Times Courier Mail Advertiser Sydney Morning Herald Sydney Gazette Argus Mercury Canberra Times

Increase access to
historic Australian newspapers
Key Features
Online Access
Freely available
Full Text searchable
Aims The Argus 12 October 1951

1803 to 1954

http://www.nla.gov.au/anplan/

Sydney Morning Herald
$1 million donation 1831- 1954

Finding missing pages not on microfilm…

Australian Women’s Weekly 1932-1982

Building National Infrastructure
Storage
Newspaper Content Management system (digitisation workflow)
Public delivery system
Panel of digitisation contractors (mass digi)
Quality assurance processes and team

Microfilm scanned into digital images

Page sequence
Metadata creation
Missing
page
targets
Checking Pages

Tapes with digital images sent to India

Article zoning and categorising, Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

150 data operators Chennai

Final quality assurance checks

Articles go into public beta system

Text correction - testing user engagement

Greatest fears!
No one will do it
OR
People will deliberately vandalise the text.
Questions?
Moderation?
Login?
Integration of data?

Interaction at article level

Add a tag ‘titanic sinking’

Add a comment

Fix text – power edit mode

After enhancements

Text Correction Activity 2008-2010

30 million lines January 2011

Public feedback on the feature
‘ OCR text correction is great! I think I just found my new hobby!’
‘ It’s looking like it will be very cool and the text fixing and tagging is quite addictive.’
‘ An interesting way of using interested readers “labour”! I really like it.’
‘ A wonderful tool - the amount of user control is very surprising but refreshing.’
‘ ‘ I applaud the capability for readers to correct the text.’

Why do it?
I love it
It’s interesting and fun
It is a worthy cause
It’s addictive
I am helping with something important e.g. recording history, finding new things
I want to do some voluntary work
I want to help non-profit making organisations like libraries
I want to learn something
It’s a challenge
I want to give something back to the community
You trust me to do it so I’ll do it

Achievements
March 2011 (2.5 yrs since release)
30,000+ volunteer text correctors
32 million lines of text corrected in 1.3 million articles
811, 000 tags added
18,800 comments added
3 million users
46 million articles

Significant newspaper research
Climate change
Influenza in Australia
Australian words and first usage e.g. ‘jumbuck’
Dating early colonial music
Building of railways and tramways
Convicts and outlaws

Trove – single search 2009
Migrate NLA discovery services into Trove:
Australian Newspapers
Picture Australia
Australian Research Online
Libraries Australia
Register of Archives and Manuscripts
Australia Dancing
Music Australia
PANDORA

Single search vision (2002) Search and Navigation Interface Image Collections Websites Databases E-Journals Library Catalogues

browse zones Single search Restrict search

Refine/limit search results Get item Groups results in zones Use API’s for Wikipedia, Amazon, Google video…

Features Tag, comment, list, send link to, cite, check copyright

Trove Strategy 2010 -2011
Grow
Develop
Engage
Promote

1. Grow – existing contributors
Content Collectors
1100 organisations:
Libraries
Museums
Galleries
Archives
Open sources
Open Library (Internet Archive)
Hathi Trust
OAISTER
Targets – websites
Amazon
Wikipedia
Google Books
YouTube
120 million items Content Creators Australian Broadcasting Commission

Grow – new contributors 2011-2012
Large aggregators e.g. Atlas of Living Australia, Bio-Diversity Heritage Library – Australian node
Large Australian cultural institutions especially museums and archives
National Libraries with Australian content e.g. UK, New Zealand.
Collection specific e.g. Australian sport

2. Develop
Agile development based on user feedback
In 2010 - 17 new releases v1-v3
Usability testing
IT team of 5
2 Programmers
Business analyst
Web developer
IT Manager

Version 4: April 2011 New homepage Access to subscription e-journal content ‘ Contribute’ has greater prominence

3. Engage: with content and each other

User generated content via Flickr: objects

User generated content: photos http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/37255844 By Nomad Tales

http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/37288101 Flexigel Family photos – identify people

Context – Tools - Lists

Personal List to record your finds and add notes

Institutional list for virtual exhibition

Educators List – Teaching aid

Alerting to new content

Text correctors - Hall of Fame

Profile -overall ranking and history

Wikipedia citation style

Lionel Logue – The King’s Speech

Wikipedia links to Trove sources

Wikipedia links

Feedback Christmas Day 2010 3000 comments and feedback received in 2010

User Forum

Trove Blog

Trove Tweets

New Years Eve 2010

Public raise money for digitisation

Rockhampton ‘Trovers’

http://climatehistory.com.au This landmark project, spanning the sciences and the humanities, draws together a team of leading climate scientists, water managers and historians to better understand south-eastern Australian climate history over the past 200–500 years. It is the first study of its kind in Australia.

Re-purposing information and sharing Blog using newspaper articles http://lynnwalsh.wordpress.com

http://themcwhirtersproject.blogspot.com

4. Promote use

Spikes caused by media
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/04/29/2885984.htm

Trove screencasting on YouTube

Trove promotional video

Incoming Trove traffic Google 70% Referrals: Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, NLA sites 16% Direct 14% January 2011

Trove dependant on…
Collaboration across cultural heritage institutions (digitisation, storage, service delivery, crowdsourcing, standards).
Data sharing
Being ‘open’ e.g. OAI, API’s
Changing institutional strategic thinking from power/control to freedom
New ideas and revisiting old ideas

[email_address] rholley@nla.gov.au Rose The site you manage is a nightmare! It’s addictive. Keeps me awake at night. Congratulations! Mary Trove finds the pieces and puts them together for you

Collecting sharing and improving data: changing roles for librarians and users. April 2011

by Rose Holley

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