ALA midwinter (Chicago) 2015 discovery white paper
•
1 like•849 views
The results of a survey of 252 librarians were released today in a new SAGE White Paper (the third in an annual series). The full title of the white paper is: Improving the Discoverability of Scholarly Content: Academic Library Priorities and Perspectives by Lettie Y. Conrad and Elisabeth Leonard.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to ALA midwinter (Chicago) 2015 discovery white paper
Similar to ALA midwinter (Chicago) 2015 discovery white paper (20)
More from Elisabeth Leonard
More from Elisabeth Leonard (9)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
ALA midwinter (Chicago) 2015 discovery white paper
- 1. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Improving the Discoverability of Scholarly Content Academic Library Priorities and Perspectives Elisabeth Leonard, MSLS, MBA Executive Market Research Manager, Online Products Team
- 2. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Recent SAGE white papers ● Improving the Discoverability of Scholarly Content in the Twenty- First Century (2012) ● Collaborative Improvements in the Discoverability of Scholarly Content (2014) ● The State of Reference Collections (2014) ● Improving the Discoverability of Scholarly Content: Academic Library Priorities and Perspectives (2015)
- 3. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Main research questions ● What do librarians believe has the greatest impact on finding resources? ● What do libraries expect of publishers when it comes to promoting and enabling discoverability of scholarly content? ● What’s at stake for libraries if we don’t all get discoverability right?
- 4. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC What has the greatest impact?
- 5. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Tension between good and best ● “I have to say that open web is probably where our students are currently doing most discovery. We have to teach students to use library resources and hopefully they get the message, but it’s not clear to what degree our library instruction is actually changing how students conduct research when they are in a time crunch and stakes are high.”
- 6. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Prevalence of discovery services
- 7. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC How can publishers optimize discovery?
- 8. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC How publishers can optimize discovery?
- 9. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Commercial impacts
- 10. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC SAGE responses ● Discovery service teamwork ● Metadata enrichment ● Promoting transparency
- 11. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC THE IMPORTANCE OF MARC?
- 12. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC For which of the following does your library use MARC records? Please select all that apply. Answer Number of responses Percentage Print books 198 94.74 E-books 182 87.08 Print journals 168 80.38 E-journals 142 67.94 Data sets 25 11.96 Databases 84 40.19 Streaming video 86 41.15
- 13. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC MARC records from publishers?
- 14. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC MARC and discovery services ● We use MARC records for any content which we can access and for which we can get (free) MARC records! But now that we have EDS, the really important ones are for print books and ebooks. For content that is available via the EDS index, MARC records are not so important. ● MARC records are key to the discoverability of our books and ebooks. Most of the use of our ebooks comes as a result of users seeing the MARC records that show up in their search results in our catalog and in our discovery layer (Summon) and clicking on those records to link to the books.
- 15. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Using MARC ● Batch-loaded records (62%) ● Individual MARC records (41%)
- 16. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Quality and timing ● The quality of ebook records varies considerably. Also there are great differences in timing of when publisher metadata is distributed to knowledge base providers (e.g., link resolver, ERM, OCLC). It would be extremely beneficial to end users (as well as to libraries) if the distributed metadata were more robust and distributed in a more timely manner.
- 17. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC SAGE and MARC ● MARC for ebooks since 2010 – soon for video, cases, and data ● Quarterly updates ● Prepared with industry-leader MARC experts, BDS
- 18. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Research guides
- 19. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Widgets
- 20. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC SAGE and widgets
- 21. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC What’s not easily discovered? ● A/V materials, multi-media ● Ebooks ● Archival material ● Dissertations ● Small-publisher content ● OA content ● Business, legal content
- 22. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC What’s next for SAGE? ● Hard-to-find content ● Further transparency ● More collaboration with librarians
- 23. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC SAGE ● New roles, staff development ● Prioritize metadata development ● Participate in standards formation
- 24. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC SAGE ● Discoverability checklists ● Librarian advisors ● White papers like this one!
- 25. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi Singapore | Washington DC Thank you! The white paper is free online: www.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/pdfs/disc overability2015.pdf or http://bit.ly/1z4lMa0 Email Elisabeth : elisabeth.leonard@sagepub.com Email Lettie: lettie.conrad@sagepub.com
Editor's Notes
- SAGE is proud of the SAGE white paper series, which covers a range of topics of interest to the information community. Our SAGE white paper presents information on librarian priorities and perspectives on discoverability. The first paper was based upon dozens of interviews with industry leaders on this topic and representative stakeholders across the academic communication supply chain. The second paper was an extension of the same model, further exploring specific collaborative initiatives for all stakeholders to improve discoverability of content. This year, we present a new approach to the topic,
- Last year around this time, we found ourselves unable to say for sure where our customers and library partners stood on these important issues. This survey of 252 librarians about their resource discovery practices and priorities was intended to help us with some fundamental, tactical questions -- We wanted to know what libraries expect of us when it comes to promoting and securing discoverability?…what librarians felt would have the greatest impact and where we should focus our efforts and investments?...MARC or SEO?…what was at stake if we missed any marks in this area? -- These are the questions we set out to answer in this 2014 discoverability study, designed to inform our online product development strategies at SAGE, and we’re pleased to share our findings and our reactions with you here today.
- To the question of what has the greatest impact on discovery of licensed content for their libraries, librarians believe that information literacy, indexing in Google, and indexing and web-scale discovery services have the greatest impact (see Table 8). Some of these are best handled by librarians – such as info lit – but our survey respondents had some clear thoughts on what publishers can do to impact discovery of our content.
- In addition to the catalog and library A–Z lists, web-scale discovery services have become a major entry point to a library’s resources. About 65% of librarians reported they have a web-scale resource discovery service, such as EDS, WorldCat Discovery, Primo, or Summon (see Table 7). For those who do not have a discovery service now, 30 librarians (45%) were planning to implement a discovery service soon.
- The highest potential for increasing discovery was seen to be indexing in search engines, such as Google and Google Scholar, and indexing in academic aggregator databases, such as Scopus and EBSCO’s Academic Search (see Table 9).
- When asked what expectations librarians have for publishers in optimizing discovery of licensed resources, librarians ranked the wide availability of metadata as the most important, followed by collaboration with library systems, compliance with standards, and clear statement of content index coverage (see Table 10).
- Librarians were asked to respond to three statements relating to publisher participation (compliance with standards, provisions of clear statements about content index coverage, and making their metadata widely available). The respondents could select multiple responses from these three statements, so the response rate varies by each statement. A lack of standards prevented approximately 23% of librarians from purchasing/subscribing to scholarly resources for their libraries, a lack of transparency prevented about 33% from purchasing/subscribing to scholarly resources, a lack of collaboration prevented approximately 26% from purchasing/subscribing to scholarly resources, and a lack of metadata has prevented slightly fewer than 33% from purchasing/subscribing to scholarly resources (see Table 11).
- Given the importance of discovery services, now reaching a level of maturity and saturation among libraries, SAGE is putting notable resource in this area. We’re pleased to say that the majority of our content is find-able within the 4 big services – Summon, EDS, WorldCat and Primo. (The only exceptions are USPS and SAGE Stats, b/c we don’t have enough text-based data for indexing at the moment, but we’re working on a pilot this year that will enable these databases to be added to the DSPs.) SAGE invests time in regular communication and teamwork with our discovery service partners – we coordinate new product launches, changes to data or systems requirements along the pathway of metadata distribution, And we provide sample content ahead of publishing new products – such as the streaming video launching this spring – to get input that shapes our content architecture and provides opportunities for co-development, for enriching metadata or presenting it to users in new and improved ways. For example, we’ve supplied EDS with custom widgets to drive visibility of important content for our shared customers. The act of engaging with discovery service suppliers in this way enables shared knowledge and increases the transparency all stakeholders have into the discovery supply chain. And we’re invested in NISO’s Open Discovery Initiative, which last year published a Recommended Practice that promotes transparency and standards in discovery service indexing. More on ODI in a bit…but it’s important to note here that SAGE will be publishing an ODI conformance checklist later this year, which will provide coverage dates and other details about where and how SAGE content is indexed in discovery services.
- Despite the importance of discovery services, in this survey, we learned that the library catalog is still a priority! On previous slides, you saw about 30% of our survey participants indicated MARC has a notable impact on discovery in their libraries. Almost 67% of librarians expected MARC records to be provided at the point of sale or on request, and approximately 63% expected to receive MARC records on request (see Table 5).
- Respondents were able to select one or more choices, so the number of responses varies by statement. When libraries use a publisher’s MARC records, they mostly use batch-loaded records (slightly more than 62%) over individual MARC records (approximately 41%; Table 6). Batch loading is seen as a way to save staff time. Comments regarding the quality of publisher-supplied records generally illustrate that librarians think the quality is low, although some librarians are satisfied with the quality.
- So, what are we doing with this knowledge? 1. We’re providing free MARC records on our platform for anyone to download, since 2010 for our ebooks – and coming soon for video, cases, datasets, and some serials (e.g., the Researchers). 2. In 2015, we’re adding quarterly routines for updating our records – as new titles publish, as we have opportunities to enrich our cataloging data, as we upgrade all records to RDA, for example. 3. And all SAGE MARC records are prepared in partnership with industry-leading MARC experts, BDS out of Scotland, they work closely with the LOC, British Library and others.
- The library web guides simulate the old-fashioned pathfinder and include subject guides, course guides, topic guides, and general guides for the research process. Due to the popularity of SpringShare’s commercially available product LibGuides, the question refers specifically to LibGuides. About 82% of respondents reported that they regularly create research guides for their patrons. In order to support library efforts and to increase awareness and use of their products, some publishers have created their own research guides for use by librarians. Although we did not ask how aware librarians are of publisher guides, 45% indicated they would be likely to use a publisher-created guide, and 12% were very likely (Table 3).
- Only about 5% of our survey respondents felt publisher-supplied widgets have a notable impact on content discovery, so it is no surprise that use of publisher supplied search widgets is also low, with only about 21% of librarians reporting that they use search widgets (see Figure 1). Some librarians though are not sure what a search widget is. And others said that they do not want to give any individual publisher preferential treatment (they feel that they need to provide a search widget for every publisher, so some librarians think of access via a widget as an all-or-nothing approach).
- So, what are we doing with that data? Well, we’ll continue to maintain the widgets already out there – and we have at least one for every product. But we’ll likely not devote much time to new or enhanced widgets at this point, instead continuing to focus our efforts on metadata, indexing, and transparency.
- Survey respondents indicated that the least discoverable items in their libraries are audio-visual materials, including streaming video, e-books, archival material (including digitized primary-source collections), dissertations, small-publisher content, open-access content, and business and legal content. With scholarly works presented in dozens of formats, each with unique metadata standards at varying levels of maturity, discoverability challenges arise across the search and indexing landscapes. All search engines treat content metadata a little differently because each has a unique algorithm. For instance, an encyclopedia entry is shorter than a journal article, which means that the keyword ranking will be more condensed and could have an impact on relevancy ranking in search results. And some content, such as images or multimedia, may be published without sufficient metadata for indexing.
- In response to feedback like this, SAGE is taking the following steps to optimize our product and content metadata 1. New roles, staff development – We’re investing in having the right staff with the right skills in place across the organization to improve our stewardship and distribution of metadata. We’ve formed new groups like the Metadata Steering Committee and Library Discovery Work Group to provide targeted resource toward delivering the best possible data. 2. Prioritize metadata development – Knowing that metadata is a top priority has helped accelerate systems and process development at SAGE, where updates to databases and production systems are required. For example, last year we did a major journals metadata project to conform with NISO’s “PIE-J” recommendations, this requires software development, in addition to data gathering, to achieve. 3. Participate in data standards formation – Speaking of NISO, knowing the importance of metadata has encouraged SAGE staff from across our offices to participate in the standards process. We have representation on 3 committees and our metadata experts come together a few times per year to respond to open calls for publisher feedback on new proposals to standardize entities or mark-up formats.
- The two biggest commercial deal breakers there were transparency and metadata, so – in addition to the metadata actions I mentioned before – SAGE is working to increase transparency into our indexing and discovery efforts. Discoverability checklists – All of our online products include what we call a “discoverability checklist” with an outline of the indexing and discovery- and usage-driving efforts in place for a given database. These can be found by anyone on our public help pages and include a list of the knowledgebases where we send data, the search tools that index our content, and some suggestions for things libraries can do – like adding our search widgets to your research guides. Librarian advisors and co-development – As we develop new types of metadata or enrich the data we distribute, we share draft MARC records with library advisors and we work closely with co-development partners in libraries to ensure we’re delivering products that fit well within your campus’ existing discovery tools. White papers and events like this! The act of sharing our research data and our responses is done with the hopes of increasing our transparency and encouraging others to do the same. The more we know about one another’s priorities and challenges, the better we can respond to collaborative opportunities to improve discovery!