Public Service for Large-Scale Digital Collections

Public Service for Large‐Scale  Digital Collec5ons  John Mark Ockerbloom (Penn)   Leslie Johnston (Library of Congress)   Chris Powell and Jeremy York (Michigan)  DLF forum working session   October 31, 2011 

It’s all about collabora5on •  We collaborate  with users •  We collaborate  with each  other •  A dis5nc5ve  quality of  libraries  From a photo by Colleen McMahon, CC‐BY     hQp://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/gatz125/5134393346/ 

Issues we’ll discuss •  What digital public service accomplishes •  Implemen5ng digital public services •  Evalua5ng and scaling up digital public services •  We’ll present quick takes on these issues, as  we’ve dealt with them in our collec5ons, in the  ﬁrst half of this session •  The second half is your turn to discuss, and ask  and answer ques5ons 

Diﬀerent collec5ons, diﬀerent scales •  MLibrary Digital Collec5ons  –  Presented by Chris Powell •  HathiTrust Digital Library  –  Presented by Jeremy York •  Lib. of Congress Digital Collec5ons & Services  –  Presented by Leslie Johnston •  The Online Books Page  –  Presented by John Mark Ockerbloom 

Qs: Goals of digital public service •  How do you ﬁnd out who your users are, and  what they most need? •  What’s the most useful thing users can do for  you, and how can you best get them to do it? •  How do you ensure you’re paying aQen5on to  the people and issues you should? •  How does the type of collec5on, interface, or  audience aﬀect your interac5ons? 

Qs: Implemen5ng digital public service  •  Do you have service quality goals and  benchmarks? How do you evaluate them? •  Who does the work?  How do you allocate  labor, and do triage? •  What kinds of technologies or  implementa5ons do you ﬁnd most useful? •  Has user feedback prompted you to change  your design or what you do?  How? 

Qs: Evalua5ng and scaling up   digital public service  •  Do you use public service data to jus5fy  collec5ons and service work? If so, what data   do you find most effec5ve? •  How can different services and ins5tu5ons  most effec5vely collaborate with each other? •  What else is good to know about suppor5ng  large‐scale digital collec5on services?  

University of Michigan Digital Library Produc5on Service  Chris Powell 

Lots of stuﬀ •  Various formats:  –  Con5nuous tone image collec5ons  –  Full‐text collec5ons: encoded XML and page  images  –  Non‐MARC metadata collec5ons  –  EAD‐encoded ﬁnding aid collec5ons •  Various sources •  Various access models 

Lots of ques5ons •  Via email from 1996‐2004 •  Moved to Footprints in June 2004 •  Hard to quan5fy the early days  –  No formal protocol  –  No aQempt to preserve the ques5ons or answers  –  IntermiQently included in overall library reference  sta5s5cs 

Footprints •  Centralize email from users of our online  resources •  Reply to people who provide contact  informa5on •  Act on those that we can, even without  contact informa5on •  Delete those we cannot follow up on •  Assigned to those responsible for the content 

A few numbers •  Just over 5000 “5ckets” in the system, open  and closed •  25,000 5ckets have been deleted   –  Spam  –  Anonymous and not ac5onable •  Roughly 650 of the 5000 5ckets are  categorized as MBooks or HathiTrust •  Moved HathiTrust to its own system in March 

Who are we serving? •  University of Michigan aﬃliates •  Aﬃliates of universi5es who subscribe to  materials we host •  Other librarians and academics •  Other students •  The general public 

What are they asking? •  Topics consistent regardless of collec5on/site  –  Did you know this was broken/wrong?  –  Now that I’ve found this, how can I get access?  –  Can I use this image in my book/project?  –  I have this old book – is it valuable?  –  Can you help me with this very complex query? •  The percentages vary in HathiTrust  –  More about content errors and access desires 

What are they not asking about  HathiTrust? •  Ques5ons related to the content •  Many repeated ques5ons in some of our  collec5ons  –  What is Apocrypha? Why is Ecclesiates 9 showing as Qoh. 9? Why isn’t  this quote in your online Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln? Why can’t I  ﬁnd the verse 9:11 about the wrath of the eagle in your online Koran? •  Also general ques5ons  –  This census from 1901 lists people born in this town, but none of the  gazeQeers or atlases show a town of this name. The Philadelphia  Centennial exhibiFon history says this, a souvenir medallion from a  relaFve says something else.  Which is right? Is it fake? Are you sure  these poems in Catholic World are by William Gibson? 

Observa5ons •  HathiTrust feedback forms guide you to error/ access repor5ng, not subject inquiries •  Single 5tle sites (Bibles, Koran, Lincoln) get the  most repeated content ques5ons •  MoA gets many content ques5ons, but has a  unifying (if general) theme  •  Aﬃlia5on with MLibrary may make content  ques5ons seem more welcome •  Data skewed by so much past prac5ce 

HathiTrust User Support  Jeremy York 

Timeline •  October 2008 – HathiTrust launched  –  hathitrust‐info@umich.edu •  February 2010 – star5ng regular sta5s5cs •  August 2010 – Chris joined hathitrust‐info •  User support group since April 2011 

What Digital Public Service  Accomplishes (1) •  How do you ﬁnd out who your users are,  and what they most need?  –  User feedback via the feedback link  –  Frequent discussions with reference & instruc5on  librarians who share their "front‐line" encounters with  users  –  HathiTrust UX Advisory Group & UX‐SIG for interested staﬀ  at partner ins5tu5ons to discuss and bring issues to the  table  •  Developing set of personas and scenarios  –  Watch blogs & twiQer for unsolicited feedback  –  Somewhat regular user research (surveys) 

Use sta5s5cs  Visits  % new visits  Page views  Pages/visit  Time on site Jan‐Jun2010  253,129  69%  2,154,385  11.6  6.3min Jul‐Dec2010  907,524  75%  8,443,692  9.3  5.3min Jan‐Jun2011  2,154,385  83%  14,945,119  6.9  4min Jul‐Oct2010  2,274,468  84%  12,072,991  5.3  3.3min 

What Digital Public Service  Accomplishes (1) •  What’s the most useful thing users can do for  you, and how can you best get them to do it?  –  Let us know of problems, issues, desires (content  and services)  –  People who are interested let us know 

User Support Issues 450 400 350 300  Content 250  Cataloging  Access and Use 200  Web Applica5ons 150  Partner Ingest 100  General  50  0 Apr‐Jun2011  Jul‐11  Aug‐11  Sep‐11 

Issue Type  August Issues  September Issues Content  110  171  Quality  96  154  Non‐partner Digital Deposit  3  2  Collections  8  4 Cataloging  26  25 Access and Use  111  127  Copyright  58  73  Permissions  23  12  Takedown  2  3  Print on Demand  6  17  Inter‐library loan  0  5  Full‐PDF or e‐copy requests  14  24  Datasets  1  1  Data Availability and APIs  1  7  Reuse of content  7  5 Web applications  27  22  Functionality problems  5  5  Problems with login  1  0  speciNically  General Questions about login  3  2  Partners setting up login  4  5  Usability issues  11  6  Feature requests  7  2 Partner Ingest  2  0 General  59  65  Partnership  13  12  Infrastructure  1  0  Miscellaneous  45  53 

hQp://www.hathitrust.org/wg_user_support_issue_types 

What Digital Public Service  Accomplishes (2) •  How do you ensure you’re paying aQen5on to  the people and issues you should?  –  Ensure that we look at many diﬀerent sources to  get the largest variety possible.  –  We receive, ﬁnd, and solicit feedback in ways  noted above 

What Digital Public Service  Accomplishes (3) •  How does the type of collec5on, interface, or  audience aﬀect your interac5ons?  –  We are preQy uniform 

Implemen5ng Digital   Public Services (1) •  Do you have service goals and benchmarks?  How do you evaluate them?  –  Respond to feedback within 1 business day  –  Handle issues such as take‐down no5ces and  cri5cal systems problems immediately  –  No goals for resolving other problems, but  correc5ons happen preQy quickly  –  User support as outreach mechanism  •  Important to how we are seen by the community 

Implemen5ng Digital   Public Services (2) •  How do you allocate staﬀ, and do triage?  –  User support group  –  Rota5on of 24‐hour “on‐call” periods 

Implemen5ng Digital   Public Services (3) •  What kinds of technologies or  implementa5ons do you ﬁnd most useful?  Users (partner and non)  All HathiTrust  University of Michigan  Contacts  Contacts  User Support  •  Copyright  Working Group  •  Quality  •  Print on Demand  Documenta5on  JIRA 

Implemen5ng Digital   Public Services (4) •  Have you changed your design or what you do  based on user feedback?  How?  –  PageTurner improvements  •  BookReader integra5on and accompanying interface  reorganiza5on; full‐screen mechanism  •  Advanced search features for full‐text search  •  Labeling for PDF download 

Evalua5ng and Scaling Up Digital Public  Service (1) •  Do you use public service data to jus5fy  collec5ons and service work? If so, what do  you ﬁnd most eﬀec5ve?  –  No, but key factor in expanding to working group  and having partner system was communica5on 

Evalua5ng and Scaling Up Digital Public  Service (2) •  How can different services and ins5tu5ons  most effec5vely collaborate with each other?  –  Commonly‐usable system  –  Defined roles (contacts, etc.)  –  Defined workflows and procedures •  What else is good to know about suppor5ng  large‐scale digital collec5on services?  –  Factor it in, don’t underes5mate 5me needed 

Library of Congress  Digital Collec5ons  Leslie Johnston 

So Much Stuff, It’s Used   as a Unit of Measure •  What cons5tutes a “Library of Congress” worth of  digital content changes all the 5me. •  A huge variety of formats: Full Text, Page Images,  Image Collec5ons, Finding Aids, Electronic Serials,  Video, Audio, Legisla5on, Web Archives.  –  An es5mate of 24.6 million files in the main LC web  presence at the end of 2010. •  A variety of acquisi5on methods, including  through the US Copyright Office •  A variety of access rules (included classified) and  access methods and systems. 

Ques5ons are Always Coming In •  Via email •  Via “Ask a Librarian” Online Reference •  In Person •  In 2010, Library staﬀ answered over 191,000  email or online reference ques5ons. 

Who are we serving? •  Congress •  Librarians at other ins5tu5ons •  Academic Researchers •  The General Public 

What Do They Want to Know? •  Do you have this thing that I couldn’t find? You must have  it, because the Library of Congress has everything. •  Why isn’t everything full text? •  How do I get the rights to use your collec5ons, and get  permissions to use them in my research or in a publica5on? •  How can I get copies of your digital files? •  Will you digi5ze something in your collec5ons for me? •  How do I cite your online collec5ons? •  Please fix this error in your web site, or in your  bibliographic or authority records. •  Can I donate digital collec5ons to the Library? •  Will the Library help me digi5ze my collec5on? •  What standards do you use for digi5zing? 

What Digital Public Service Accomplishes •  How we learn something about who out  users are, and what they need most:  – Interac5ons with Digital Reference librarians  – User feedback via the Contact Form  – Comments on the Library’s blogs  – Share Tool and Web log sta5s5cs  •  Over 580 million page‐views of the Library’s  website in 2010.  

What Digital Public Service Accomplishes •  What we learn:  –  What are we doing wrong? One issue is the  complexity of the Library’s web presence. We now  have an ini5a5ve to make it easier to ﬁnd digital  collec5ons without knowing about them in the  ﬁrst place.  –  What are we doing right? We get more posi5ve  reac5ons and thanks for doing what we do than  nega5ve. 

What Digital Public Service Accomplishes  •  How do you ensure you’re paying  aQen5on to the people and issues you  should?  –  We read the messages that we get.  –  We hold ourselves to a very high standard of  responding to all reference inquiries. 

What Digital Public Service Accomplishes •  How does the type of collec5on,  interface, or audience aﬀect your  interac5ons?  – Our feedback from Congress is diﬀerent  from our feedback from the public  •  Congress makes direct digital collec5on building and  services depending on the tasks at hand  •  Researchers and the public are rela5vely uniform 

Implemen5ng Digital Public Services •  Do you have service goals and benchmarks?  How do you evaluate them?  –  Respond to ques5ons and feedback within 5  business days  –  4‐6 week 5meframe for digital reproduc5on  requests  –  No benchmarks for resolving other issues 

Implemen5ng Digital Public Services •  How do you allocate staﬀ, and do triage?  – Varies by custodial unit and collec5on  – Digital Reference Teams has posted chat  hours, and a rota5ng duty roster 

Implemen5ng Digital Public Services •  What kinds of technologies or  implementa5ons do you ﬁnd most  useful?  –  Online Chat  –  Contact/Feedback Forms  –  Online FAQs  –  Documented online guidelines for use of the  collec5ons  –  Documented standards online 

Implemen5ng Digital Public Services •  Have you changed your design or what  you do based on user feedback?  How?  – Of public services? Not really.  – Of our overall web presence? That is  happening now, to help users beQer  discover our collec5ons. 

Evalua5ng and Scaling Up  Digital Public Service •  Do you use public service data to jus5fy  collec5ons and service work? If so, what  do you ﬁnd most eﬀec5ve?  – No, we do not.  But that doesn’t mean that  we don’t report on them. 

Evalua5ng and Scaling Up  Digital Public Service •  How can different services and ins5tu5ons most  effec5vely collaborate with each other?  –  Share more informa5on about what collec5ons and  digi5zed collec5ons we have  •  Explicitly document rights for media files and metadata  •  Make them available as linked open data where we can  –  Common‐ish standards, or at least well‐documented  standards  –  Consistent, documented workflows •  What else is good to know about suppor5ng large‐ scale digital collec5on services?  –  The scale really does make a difference. Our response  5mes are always going to be slower. 

The Online Books Page  John Mark Ockerbloom 

Tes5ng the limits of a low‐resource  catalog project, since 1993 •  1 person working part‐5me falls behind  –  Both in catalog, and in responding to public •  Scaling up the catalog  –  Metadata automa5cally downloaded from HathiTrust,  other sources  –  I con5nue to add new entries, “curate” auto‐loaded  entries, on my own and at user request •  Scaling up user service  –  Invite people to standard forms  –  Make eﬃcient back end to deal with requests •  Ul5mately, no subs5tute for human investment 

Feedback links in results 

Request cura5on 

Users tell me what they want 

And can hear something back 

What I see on my end 

Ensuring I get to everyone 

Looking ahead: Collabora5on •  Number of online books s5ll to grow lots  –  Especially as I add more automa5cally loaded sources •  Staﬀ, budget not likely to grow  –  User feedback helps me determine where eﬀort best spent •  Enhanced back‐end interface may make mul5ple  maintainers feasible •  May be useful collabora5ons with interns, volunteers  –  A way to get hands‐on experience with librarianship  •  Sharing data helps other services build on my work  –  Enhancing “regular” library collec5ons may enable support 

Discuss: Goals of digital public service •  How do you ﬁnd out who your users are, and  what they most need? •  What’s the most useful thing users can do for  you, and how can you best get them to do it? •  How do you ensure you’re paying aQen5on to  the people and issues you should? •  How does the type of collec5on, interface, or  audience aﬀect your interac5ons? 

Discuss: Implemen5ng  digital public service  •  Do you have service quality goals and  benchmarks? How do you evaluate them? •  Who does the work?  How do you allocate  labor, and do triage? •  What kinds of technologies or  implementa5ons do you ﬁnd most useful? •  Has user feedback prompted you to change  your design or what you do?  How? 

Discuss: Evalua5ng and scaling up   digital public service  •  Do you use public service data to jus5fy  collec5ons and service work? If so, what data   do you find most effec5ve? •  How can different services and ins5tu5ons  most effec5vely collaborate with each other? •  What else is good to know about suppor5ng  large‐scale digital collec5on services?   –  What have you learned that you didn’t expect? 

Collabora5on Photo by Mary Mark Ockerbloom 

Public Service for Large-Scale Digital Collections

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