Middlemash : Discovery Layer & Next Generation Catalogues

Mashlib Lib & Discovery tools

Chris Keene
Technical Development Manager, University of Sussex Library
Which means I do everything Web and Electronic Library related.
Twitter: chriskeene
Web: http://www.nostuff.org
Email: C.J.Keene@sussex.ac.uk

Mash up North Middlemash Mash Original

Where next? up to you Don’t need to ask. Anywhere. Any topic

Unconference
Don’t care about your technical skills

But..
Let’s do it.
Change is good
Change should happen as soon as it’s ready (except possibly Week 1 of Autumn Term)
People who whinge are wrong
If you try something and it doesn’t work. Ignore those who say ‘told you so’. Learn and get cracking with your next idea!

I stole this from Paul Stainthorp via http: //librarystaff . blogs . lincoln .ac. uk/
10 guiding principles for achieving Library2.0 nirvana
1. Better late than never.
2. Don’t reject a minor improvement because you’re waiting for a hypothetical perfect solution to arrive.
3. If you love your data, set them free .
4. If it needs a help guide, you’ve probably got it wrong.
5. If you assume your users are stupid, they won’t disappoint.
6. RSS is non-negotiable.
7. The ‘ net interprets control as damage, and routes around it .
8. Do it, then ask people what they think. Not the other way round.
9. Show me pictures, or it didn’t happen.
10. The answer to “…is Library2.0 about technology or not?” is “ Mu ” .

and now on to … discovery layer / next generation catalogues

use the terms some what interchangeably
Discovery layer – an application or service which sits on top of a library’s catalogue, electronic holdings and other records to provide a unified and modern experience
Next Generation Catalogue / NGC – OPAC ‘done right’ i.e. looks and acts like the rest of web with features to meet user’s needs.

Kick ass search and relevance ranking
More human metadata: descriptions, reviews, table of contents
Tagging: so much potential for users to use this in ways we can’t even think of
User comments / reviews : (this is far more of a risk for Amazon than libraries)
Allow users to make lists of items, export them to other systems
Links to other services (Google Books, Library things)

Kick ass computer metadata : COinS, RDFa etc – to play nice with the web (zotero, Firefox linking tools)
That includes exporting in as many ways as possible RSS, ATOM, Endnote, more
Permanent links. Cool URIs
Did you mean? You may be interested in..
Facets (refine) limiting search. This is really important when...

… You’re using data/records from multiple sources.
i.e. Discovery Layer
One search to search them all is important, but people will still want to search subsets (a particular branch, e-only etc) - needs to be flexible.

What do we want? A search box that returns…
… everything that might be of academic relevance for the search term in question ?
… wh at’s physically in our library which match the words in the search term

Prism 3

Blacklight

Scriblio

Bibliocommons

VuFind

Aquabrowser http://catalogue.sussex.ac.uk/

Aquabrowser at Sussex Timeline
Decided to purchase Summer 2008
Set up Autumn 2008.
Live as a alternative ‘beta’ catalogue Jan 2009
Default catalogue Sept 2009

Aquabrowser at Sussex
Why: to improve user experience
Added ‘My Discoveries’ (tagging, reviews). Liked the concept but bad implementation.
Have added Metalib search to Aquabrowser, highlights journal results to those using the catalogue. (technically resource intensive!)

It makes you ask questions
What should be in your catalogue
What should be included when your users search your catalogue/discovery layer.

Original model

With discovery layer

What to put in your catalogue
Add less to LMS catalogue. <- heavy weight, un-agile (another word for un-agile is ‘MARC’)
Online journals? E-books? Free stuff (free journals)? Online databases? Special Collections? E-theses? Institutional Repository items?

Issues
“ Sure it’s funky but I just want to renew my books”

No standards for ‘My Account’, Reservations, Requests.
Crappy or unimplemented standards for holdings
These are big problems. Users have to use old interface (which is tied to old catalogue, which is confusing)

Not always easy to link to a ‘Place Reservations/Request’ screen for a specific item in the old catalogue
Users may need to log in twice (for ‘My Account’ and ngc personalisation).
Interlibrary Requests can be a problem as well.
Primo and VuFind are two that have made efforts to work around these problems

Simple web (RESTful) based standards to provide holdings info, and handle requests etc shouldn’t be difficult.
Library systems community need to push on this.

Potential holdings solutions
DLF ILS Discovery Interface Task Force http://www.diglib.org/architectures/ilsdi/
ISO 20775:2009 http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39735
Z39.50 (for some LMS systems)

Two worlds collide Library LMS Catalogue E-Resources and Articles Need a solution to caters for both. The best at one may not be the best at the other.

Thanks to those on Twitter who acted as my (only) research tool.
Chris Keene
Twitter: chriskeene
Web: http://www.nostuff.org
Email: C.J.Keene@sussex.ac.uk

Middlemash : Discovery Layer & Next Generation Catalogues

by Chris Keene

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