Persona-based development of a new discovery system using open-source components

Persona-based development of a new discovery system using open-source components Karin Clavel, TU Delft Library, the Netherlands

1. “ Replace the OPAC with a more user-friendly system”

Key features

Google-like search box

searches multiple sources at the same time

accommodates students, scholars and corporate customers

facetted search

Web2.0 elements: RSS, tags, comments

nice looking, intuitive user interface

2. Are we in touch with our users’ needs? Tamara Adlin on http://www.adlininc.com/

Design for just one person

Alan Cooper, 2004:

If you want to create a product that satisfies a broad audience of users, logic will tell you to make it as broad in functionality as possible to accommodate the most people.

Logic is wrong.

You will have far greater success by designing for a single person.

We design for Sophie!

Who is Sophie?

Architecture student

Main goal: inspiration

Books with photos and stories

Articles about building technology

Images, maps, photos

Searches by cover

Wants to consult peers or teacher when searching

A persona…

Our new integrated search system is built for Sophie…

Picture by Dr. Hemmert on Flickr.com

… and for Roger, Bert, Hans, Koen and Lily Pictures by ddamredhead, badjonni, Baked Beans, deansouglass, kryptos86 on Flickr.com

Eye-opener

Both students and business customers would like a system that is more focused on the search process. They want to be able to resume the process at a different time, maybe with different people helping them.

Libraries tend to focus on more hits, better hits, not on the process.

Using your system, I want to become a better searcher …

3. Discover!

4. MERESCO open-source components

MERESCO component library

MERESCO is an open-source library of components for (meta)data management.

It supports creating flexible, scalable and open (meta)data management systems such as repositories, search engines and archives.

Source: meresco.com

Meresco components standardise & normalise store index SRU UI & services harvest metadata sources Harvest: - Meresco OAI-PMH harvester - Aleph harvester

Meresco components standardise & normalise store index SRU UI & services harvest metadata sources XSLT, XML Crosswalk - standardise to MODS - normalise author names, dates, languages, document types

Meresco components standardise & normalise store index SRU UI & services harvest metadata sources

Store one “document” as many parts:

original metadata and MODS

ratings, reviews, full text …

Meresco components standardise & normalise store index SRU UI & services harvest metadata sources

Index

Lucene full text index

Facet index

N-gram index

Meresco components standardise & normalise store index SRU UI & services harvest metadata sources Query parser: - Google-like to SRU - Boolean to SRU SRU interface

Meresco components standardise & normalise store index SRU UI & services harvest metadata sources Availability, link to full-text RSS LibraryThing Loan, renew, order Rate, review

Going open source: