Talis Insight 2007

OPAC 2.0: Teaching the Pig to Sing lipstick, cowbells and serendipity Dave Pattern, Library Systems Manager University of Huddersfield d.c.pattern@hud.ac.uk http://slideshare.net/daveyp 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #1

Contents • does your OPAC suck? • OPAC survey findings • experiences at Huddersfield • other libraries • OPAC 2.0 • further OPAC survey findings Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #2

Does Your OPAC “Suck”? 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #3

06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #4

“More Cowbell” …huh? “Used to express that something is deeply lacking oomph... to express that something is far from perfect, needs repair, fixing, rectifying.” (everything2.com) 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #7

The OPAC as a Pig • “After all, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still very much a pig.” (Roy Tennant discussing the OPAC, Library Journal, 2005) • “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” (attrib. Robert Heinlein, author) 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #10

Pig Ugly? 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #11

“Kissy, Kissy?” 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #12

OPAC Survey (2007) • On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is extremely unhappy and 10 is extremely happy), how happy are you with your OPAC? 5.1  06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #13

OPAC Survey (2007) • One criticism of OPACs is that they rarely have cutting edge features that our users expect from a modern web site. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you think your OPAC meets the needs and expectations of your users? 4.5 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #14

OPAC Survey (2007) • On a scale of 1 to 10, how easy do you think one of your average users finds your OPAC is to use? 4.6 • On a scale of 1 to 10, how important do you think it is that an OPAC is easy & intuitive to use? 9.2 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #15

Experiences at Huddersfield • definitely not OPAC 2.0 • enhancements to the existing OPAC – user suggestions from surveys – “2.0” inspired features – borrowing good ideas from other web sites – new features launched with no/low publicity – “perpetual beta” • required staff buy-in and a willingness to experiment and take risks 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #16

Spell Checker • we monitored keyword searches over a six month period and discovered approx 23% of searches gave zero results – most OPACs present the user with a “dead end” page – a good search engine should still give the user options on a failed search (“did you mean?”) 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #17

Spell Checker 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #18

Keyword Suggestions • failed keyword searches are cross referenced with www.answers.com to provide new search suggestions 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #19

Keyword Suggestions 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #20

Borrowing Suggestions • we had details of over 2,000,000 CKOs spanning 10 years stored in the library management system and gathering virtual dust • Web 2.0 – “Data is the Next Intel Inside1” • historic circulation data can be mined2 to uncover the hidden trends and links between potentially disparate library items 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #21

Borrowing Suggestions 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #22

Ratings and Comments 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #23

Other Editions • uses FRBR-y web services provided by OCLC and LibraryThing to locate other editions and related works within local holdings – OCLC’s xISBN1 – LibraryThing’s thingISBN2 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #24

Other Editions 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #25

Email Alerts 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #26

RSS feeds 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #27

“If you build it, will they come?” also borrowed other editions serendipity did you mean 7000 6000 5000 number of clicks 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 Mar-07 May-07 May-06 Nov-06 Dec-06 Oct-06 Apr-07 Aug-06 Feb-07 Sep-06 Jan-07 Jun-06 Jul-06 Jun-07 Jul-07 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #33

Increase in Usage quot;Did You Meanquot; - 2006/07 Compared 2500 2000 number of clicks 1500 1000 500 0 May June July 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #34 2006 2007

Increase in Usage quot;People Who Borrowed This...quot; - 2006/07 Compared 3500 3000 2500 number of clicks 2000 1500 1000 500 0 May June July 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #35 2006 2007

Lipstick on the Pig “We need to focus more energy on important, systemic changes rather than cosmetic ones. If your system is more difficult to search and less effective than Amazon.com, then you have work to do. After all, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still very much a pig.” (Roy Tennant, Library Journal, 2005) 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #36

Problems ...Challenges! • there was no formal process for discussing and agreeing new OPAC features – so we organised a web/library 2.0 afternoon for staff • some initial scepticism from staff – would users think borrowing suggestions were formal recommendations from the library? – aren’t borrowing suggestions just for selling books? – how relevant will the suggestions be? • would sudden changes confuse users? 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #37

Solutions • encourage suggestions from staff • include users in decision making process • encourage play and experimentation • don’t be afraid to make mistakes! • look widely for ideas • “build crappy prototypes fast” • monitor usage – if usage is poor then remove it 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #38

Searching for books by colour 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #39

Search visualisations 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #40

Search visualisations 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #41

CKO visualisations 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #42

Other Libraries • Ann Arbor District Library • North Carolina State University (Endeca) • LibraryThing for Libraries • Open Source OPACs 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #43

Ann Arbor District Library • early adopter of “2.0” (John Blyberg) • OPAC deeply embedded in Library portal • virtual catalogue cards (with graffiti!) • user tagging, ratings, and reviews • borrowing suggestions • RSS feeds • http://www.aadl.org/catalog/ 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #44

North Carolina State University • facetted browsing • http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/ • http://endeca.com 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #47

LibraryThing for Libraries • integrates LibraryThing data into the OPAC – tags – borrowing suggestions – other editions • www.librarything.com/forlibraries/ 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #49

Open Source OPACs • Scriblio (formerly WPOpac) – uses WordPress (blogging software) • VuFind – uses PHP & MySQL • Lucene & Solr – Project Backlight (Univ. of Virginia) – FacBackOPAC – Huddersfield (blog post) 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #52

The Traditional Vendors • Talis Platform – “an environment for building next generation applications and services” • Ex Libris Primo – “one-stop solution for the discovery and delivery of local and remote resources” • Innovative Interfaces Encore – “goes beyond the online-catalog model to provide a better patron experience ” 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #54

OPAC 2.0 • “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” (Alan Kay, computer scientist and former Xerox PARC researcher) • “The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.” (William Gibson, science fiction author and creator of the word “cyberspace”) 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #55

OPAC 2.0 • shopping list of features: – spell checking (“did you mean?”) – relevancy ranking, search refining, and facets – manual recommendations (“best bets”) – automated suggestions (based on both global and user- specific data) – user participation (“read-write OPAC”) – foster communities of interest 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #56

OPAC 2.0 • shopping list of features: – improve serendipity – expose hidden links between items – APIs and Web Services to expose data – promote unintended uses – user personalisation – embed external data (e.g. Wikipedia, LibraryThing) – RSS feeds and OpenSearch 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #57

Quick OPAC Survey – Features • Please rate how important you feel the following features are to your users in a modern OPAC. – embedding the OPAC in external sites (e.g. portals) 8.7 – “did you mean” spelling suggestions 8.6 – enriched content (book covers, ToCs, etc) 8.4 – RSS feeds (e.g. new books, searches, etc) 7.8 – facetted browsing (e.g. like NCSU Library) 7.4 – “people who borrowed this” suggestions 6.5 – user tagging of items (i.e. folksonomy) 6.1 – user added comments and reviews 6.0 – personalised suggestions (e.g. like Amazon) 5.9 – user added ratings for items 5.7 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #58

Implementation of Features 500 10 number of respondents (total 729) 9 400 8 importance (out of 10) 7 300 6 5 200 4 3 100 2 1 0 0 ts s gs d g n g C s ed nt ed he ea in in PA ce in gg n ow ic fe e t fa ar O m nr ra rr m a S lth u t le e r m bo RS yo er se er co ea s o d us st u r di u s al se Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration u Change 06/Nov/2007 for #59 already got getting soon importance

Features – Future Trends? Rate of Increase of Feature Implementation 600% 10 9 500% 500% 8 importance (out of 10) 7 400% % increase 6 311% 279% 300% 5 4 189% 200% 167% 3 137% 130% 122% 2 100% 72% 1 28% 0% 0 s s d s g s g ed n C t nt ed he ng in in ea ce PA ti ow g n e fe ic fa ar ag O m nr ra rr m S t th u e rl bo e m r RS al yo er se co e s e o us d u st r s u di al se u 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #60 % increase in quot;getting soonquot; compared to quot;already gotquot; importance

Importance (getting soon) Feature Importance 10 10 9.1 8.9 8.8 8.8 8.7 importance (out of 10) 9 9 8.4 8.0 8.7 8.6 7.8 8.4 8 8 7.4 7.8 7.0 7.4 7 7 6.5 6 6 6.1 6.1 6.0 5.7 5 5 4 4 s d g s n gs C g ed ts et ed he in in ea PA en tin w c gg rn fe ric fa m O ro m ra a ta en S r lth u m le bo RS yo er er co ea er us us so d us st er di al us 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #61 importance (all) importance (already got) importance (getting soon)

Technology Adoption Lifecycle 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #62

Technology Adoption - Now 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #63

Technology Adoption – Q1 08? 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #64

Importance – UK respondents UK respondents non-UK respondents 10 10 8.8 8.7 9 9 8.6 7.9 importance (out of 10) 8.6 7.7 8 8 8.1 7.8 6.7 7 7 7.2 6.2 6.2 6.0 5.9 6.5 6 6 5.9 5.8 5.7 5.4 5 5 5.3 4 4 g n ng C ts ed ed gs ds s ea in et PA en ni w tin e h gg c m fe ric ro ar m fa O ra ta m u r le en SS bo lth yo 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #65 er er co er ea R us us so d us er di st al us

Thank you! 06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #66

Talis Insight 2007

by daveyp

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