Magaly Bascones (JISC)- Metadata: implications for librarians and end user
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Slides from sherif event, June 2018 'Save the time of the (e)reader: easier access for all?'
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Magaly Bascones (JISC)- Metadata: implications for librarians and end user
- 1. 30/06/2018 Magaly Bascones, Jisc KB+ Service Manager Metadata: implications for librarians and end users Sherif Committee Event - 25/06/2018
- 2. Aim of today To highlight the main challenges presented by metadata, why this matters and the impact inadequate metadata is having, and finish with some recommendations to improve the situation 30/06/2018 2
- 3. Libraries Efficiency (user satisfaction) and savings (staff time) Purchasing consortia Knowledge Base Plus (Jisc) Support libraries to reduce the impact of failures in supply and accessibility Content providers Problem with the supply (maintenance/quality/KBART compliance) System vendors Promises vs Reality Standards and Recommendations: KBART 30/06/2018 3 The story so far
- 5. Provision 30/06/2018 5 difficulties • Delays • Lack of regular updates • Lack of accuracy causes* • Lack of knowledge • Other priorities • Lack of request from customers *KBART StandingCommittee 2017 survey
- 6. Provision 30/06/2018 6 KB+ • No delays. Provision ensured between September and December. Aligned with the production of Jisc Collections agreements • Quality. Methods and procedures that ensure quality • Trusted source of metadata
- 9. 30/06/2018 9 Free service ≠ no cost The librarian said : “The collection contains over 450 titles, however the current target available in our link resolver only contains 45” No ISSNs Not always identified as part of the collection. Discoverability
- 10. Issues of performance of system vendors products Lack of interoperability Uploading the data : delays, mistakes, incompletions 30/06/2018 10 Discoverability
- 13. 30/06/2018 13 Journals agreements: all about journals! “Institutions taking the full collection prior to 2017 must also pay an access fee of X% of non-subscribed titles added in 2015, 2016 and 2017” “Note that all new journals carrying volumes 1 and 2 are freely available” “xxx has added seven new titles for 2016” Understanding value
- 14. 30/06/2018 14 A librarian said: “I'm checking through an xxxx update (from xxx) for KB+JISC Collections xxxxx Full Collection xxx, and the following titles have all been deleted: • The journal of clinical endocrinology & metabolism. • Sleep. • Zoological journal of the Linnean Society • Neurosurgery / • International affairs. • Physical therapy : journal of the American PhysicalTherapy Association. • Operative neurosurgery. • Botanical journal of the Linnean Society • Annals of work exposures and health. • Endocrinology. • Endocrine reviews. • Journal of crustacean biology • Journal of the IGPL • Journal of the European Economic Association. • The American journal of comparative law. • Biological journal of the Linnean Society. As far as I can tell from KB+ these titles are all still included” Understanding value
- 15. 30/06/2018 15 Institution 1 Institution 2 Instiution 3 institution 4 institution 5 institution 6 institutions 7 institution 8 institution 9 Journal Vendor A Vendor B Vendor B Vendor B Vendor C Vendor B Vendor D Vendor E Vendor B institutional on-line only pay per view American Journal of Legal History Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes £90.00 £27.00 Biological Journal of the Linnean Society Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes £5,600.00 £27.00 Biology of Reproduction Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No £567.00 £27.00 Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes No £2,594.00 £27.00 Diseases of the Esophagus Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No £915.00 £27.00 Endocrine Reviews Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes £536.00 £27.00 Endocrinology No No No No No Yes Yes Yes No £1,509.00 £27.00 European Heart Journal - Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes £370.00 £27.00 European Heart Journal - Quality of Care and Clinical Outcomes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes £562.00 £27.00 International Affairs Yes No No No No No Yes Yes Yes £552.00 £27.00 Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes £895.00 £27.00 Journal of Crustacean Biology Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes £263.00 £27.00 Journal of the European Economic Association Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No £521.00 £27.00 Neurosurgery Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes £1,209.00 £27.00 Operative Neurosurgery Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes £27.00 Physical Therapy Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes £138.00 £27.00 SLEEP Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes £298.00 £27.00 The American Journal of Comparative Law Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes £80.00 £27.00 Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes £2,478.00 £27.00 Score 95% 64% 36% 26% 78% 78% 100% 73% band 5a band 5b band 5a band 3 band 4 band 3 band 6 band 3 band 1 Understanding value
- 17. Content providers KBART Standing Committee 2017 survey: Publishers do not prioritise the creation of KBART files due to the lack of customer request Libraries Jisc (KB+) with Sero Consulting produce a brief paper addressed to librarians Libraries can often work around the failures in supply and accessibility either manually managing lists or with the help of services such as KB+ – Missing opportunities: purchasing and negotiation – Lack of unified position regarding metadata – Lack of confidence on metadata knowledge SystemVendors:Too big to care? 30/06/2018 17 Priorities
- 18. 30/06/2018 18 Libraries • Each library has to decide what is the basic standards in metadata they need to receive from content providers and system vendors • Use existing tools as purchasing consortia and procurement processes • Knowledge Base Plus : save you time and increase quality • As customers and as community (prospective customers) Content Providers • There are good commercial reasons why to prioritise the provision of good metadata SystemVendors • Promises vs Reality Ownership! Priorities
- 19. On the horizon 30/06/2018 19
- 20. On the horizon 30/06/2018 20 ABOUT PERFORMANCEOF SYSTEMVENDORS ExLibris accepting changes from libraries to their KB (CZ) without checking the requested changes Alma (CZ) metadata LMS has limited fields for licensing, supplier, admin information - inadequate as an e-ressoruces management tool Alma user from Norway: why does ExLibris "reduce" metadata from publishers when produce packages in CZ? How dare they do that? I do have concerns that we often prioritise link resolving to the expected resource over the pursuit of accurate metadata - e.g. adding in ISBNS which match an object in the SFX KB to enable access where we are unsure of the veracity of the ISBN - local gains - but letting down community Links in the discovery tool to Wiley that go to a page not found even though we have access to the content. Both Wiley and our discovery provider say it is not their problem Chaotic update schedules Discovery platform (summon) surfaces some of our print records differently from their instance in our library catalogue (capita). We catalogue them but they are "ingested" and lose metadata. Resource not found due to a lack of metadata LMS confused between same item on different e-resources When reporting problems to ExLibris (salesforce) I worry about the knowledge/experience/competency of staff handling enquiry. Often I report a problem I say e.g "this is not right. I think it should be this. Can someone check + amdn if necessary/appropriate? " not always convinced about competency of investigations. Want to see clearly what we have access to in Full text, not what is available somewhere in the world….the years, the vols, issues. Commercial/ academic link resolvers supply of metadata very poor. Struggle to get title lists + links, let alone KBART Aggregated subscription databases with content change ABOUT IMPACT ON LIBRARY STAFF Our library unable to review weekly updates from SFX sufficiently SHEDL deal metadata - large number of records - small team without time to check records Very small university with limited staff do not catalogue e-resources. Rely on EDS journal records and publication finder tool, inaccuracies, inconsistencies, records change, PTO. Rely on website entries for databases (database A-Z) Don’t have time to check if we actually have access to the titles we subscribe to in the big deals ALSO FROM PUBLISHERS From a publisher: do we need to put our bibliodata elsewhere or adding all to ONIX is enough? From a publisher: how do we know if we are using the best possible keywords (+ how important are keywords - in addition to standard bibliodata to librarians and users) As publisher: how do I know metadata has been updated in your system? From a publisher: system vendors - we send data but no feedback if metadata should be changed. If we send updated information - no garanties this is used From a publisher : OA titles in vendor sources
- 21. On the horizon 30/06/2018 21 KBART is one of the industry’s most used formats for data transfer. Originally created for the transfer of data from content providers to knowledge base vendors
- 22. On the horizon » KBART Holdings Reports are KBART files customized to represent a snapshot of an institution’s holdings at a given time. » It will include content an institution is entitled to access contractually as well as content that may be accessible for other reasons (e.g. open access) » Gaps in publication will not be represented in the Holdings Report » Consortia-level reports, item-level access type (paid, open access, perpetual access,etc.) are outside the scope (they may be handled in a later phase) So far, KBART automated holdings updates work with: Ex Libris SFX and Alma • Elsevier (journals and books) • OVID (journals and books) 30/06/2018 22
- 23. Benefits (?) Saves time There is not a clear linkage between the proposal and the benefits Improves accuracy of knowledge base Improves discovery and access by patrons 30/06/2018 23 Risks Loosing package view of subscribed content Consortia/sector analysis at risk Libraries will need to manage their holdings individually and querying individually to content providers. This will reduce pressure on system vendors More time will be consume on collection analysis “Blindfolded” collection management On the horizon
- 24. jisc.ac.uk Magaly Bascones KB+ Service Manager Jisc Magaly.Bascones@jisc.ac.uk 30/06/2018 24
Editor's Notes
- The metadata issues are not new. Metadata has been always part of library world. We knew it as cataloguing for print collections, with electronic resources the role of the metadata has been exacerbated but not always understood and well manage. In electronic resources metadata has been for a long time treated as an add on and accessory rather than an essential part of the products.
- Today, we want to do another step towards the understanding of the issues caused by bad quality metadata. Today, we want to bring the perspective of the end user and librarians. How bad metadata affect them despite the efforts of libraries to propose them the best service investing in content and sometimes in last generation discovery systems. We will highlight the main challenges presented by metadata, why this matters and the impact inadequate metadata is having, to finish with some recommendations for stakeholders.
- The theme about why metadata is important and the issues around the quality of metadata are not new. All the actors of the supply chain have a part to play and are affected. Here I will summaries where the different actors are in order to give the context of our presentation. Lets start with Libraries. Libraries are looking for end to end workflows from acquisition to discovery of electronic resources in order to automate tasks and release staff time. They want to ensure user satisfaction and value for money. Purchasing consortia, they expect that electronic resources will be provided with “adequate” metadata by the content providers when purchased. However, experience shows that in many cases this is not the case. Knowledge Base Plus, we support libraries to workaround failures in supply and accessibility. We are suppliers of curated metadata. Our work have help to proof that the supply of good metadata is possible. We have also helped libraries to distinguish between the problems on the supply from content providers and the delivery from system vendors. Content providers: they provide metadata of variable quality and they do not always adhere to commonly accepted standards/recommendations. System Vendors: the increasing complexity of library information systems has led to new challenges in the management of metadata. Although these systems promise to reduce the effort in managing discovery metadata, current experience shows a more mixed picture. Standards and Recommendations are necessary in the metadata world. Recommendations as KBART, help content providers to deliver ingestible and enriched metadata more useful for system vendors. Also, support librarians to be able to work with their content. KBART is a readable friendly format.
- What we know up to now: We know that Metadata issues are not new. We know that there are recommendations on how to do better for example KBART that are not always follow. We know where all the actors of the supply chain are positioned, their positive contribution, and for some of them their struggle. Based on our researches and our day to day experience, we have identified that these are the current challenges, and we will present them to you along side, with why this matters and the impact they are having.
- To understand the issues we will talking today it is important to keep on mind the 2007 report about link resolvers and the performance of the supply chain. This report already 10 years old made the point that the poor provision of metadata was undermining the technology of link resolvers. The provision was and is responsibility of content providers. As a result of this report, KBART format was created. KBART is a format adapted to the needs of knowledge bases today and as before, the provision of metadata by content providers is plenty of deficiencies. Content providers may have adopted the KBART format but there are delays, lack of accuracy and lack of updates. Why? We know a little bit on this. The KBART standing committee, where I am/was co chair run survey and the findings numbered here include lack of knowledge, other priorities and lack of customer’s requests. In this case of libraries…we will come back to this latter
- In 2013 to address the problems related to provision, Jisc KB+ started its activities. The amin was to provide libraries the opportunity to manage their electronic collections using a good set of metadata. The KB+ team has excelled in the task as metadata provider. The data not only available in KB+ but injected in the supply chain. As today, KB+ has addressed the issues related to provision within the metadata we curate. The delays doesn’t exist, the quality is good and KB+ is an appreciated tool by librarians and it is trusted. Trust is very important in the metadata world. We could think that that is!, all is solved but it is not the case
- What we know up to now: We know that Metadata issues are not new. We know that there are recommendations on how to do better for example KBART that are not always follow. We know where all the actors of the supply chain are positioned, their positive contribution, and for some of them their struggle. Based on our researches and our day to day experience, we have identified that these are the current challenges, and we will present them to you along side, with why this matters and the impact they are having.
- Let’s see some examples. I have based these example in real queries received by the KB+ team. A librarian had a subscription to a bundle using a consortia agreement with the content provider for access to an specific collection. The agreement specified that new titles should be included. KB+ team has added these titles in the correspondent title list in November 2017 but up to last week the end users of the library who reported the issues continue without finding these new titles (here a couple of examples). This will affect usage, without accurate usage it is very difficult to calculate cost per use or having a complete understanding of the entitlements. This is not an isolated case, we had received more similar queries affecting other collections.
- I have another example of missing titles. It is a digitalised collection. In this case, a librarian said: “The collection contains over 450 titles, however the current target available in our link resolver only contains 45” The access to this collection is free to libraries and end users but this doesn’t mean it is cost free. The success of this digitalisation projects is on their usage. Again, in a time when money is tight, funders are more strict to allocate funding digitalisation projects and they want reassurance that the chosen collections are useful. If only 10% of the collection is discoverable, it doesn’t look right, does it? I have the hint that records with not identifiers haven’t been processed (this is not very good for an archive collection). Also for the titles that were displayed, not always were identified as part of the free collection. This could be a problem of delivery of metadata or a problem on the processing of the metadata by the system vendors.
- When the provision is not an issue, other issues have surfaced. The performance of the system vendors products System vendors can’t hide anymore blaming the content providers provision There is an interesting piece of research from IEEE, Julie Zhu about the performance of system vendors. She analysed how IEEE data looks like in different vendors knowledge bases. She explained that IEEE when through a process of improvement of their metadata and KBART files delivery. She explained in her article the steps they took and the time they spend. Here her results that interest us today.
- As you see the KBART 2 fields are the fields that make files more relevant as they include ebooks information, title history and access type. In this field, content providers shouldidentify and distinguish paid content and free content. Again, even though content providers (some of them), files completed with enriched and basic information, this information just gets lost, unused
- What we know up to now: We know that Metadata issues are not new. We know that there are recommendations on how to do better for example KBART that are not always follow. We know where all the actors of the supply chain are positioned, their positive contribution, and for some of them their struggle. Based on our researches and our day to day experience, we have identified that these are the current challenges, and we will present them to you along side, with why this matters and the impact they are having.
- One of the preferred methods of content providers to present their products are bundles. Agreements negotiated by purchasing consortia include collections of journals and other electronic resources. There is the believe that there is value for money when buying a collection instead of the individual subscriptions. Every renewal season, content providers advertise their proposal with phrases that imply that more content is being offer (with new titles for example, or because the terms and conditions allow more access). Customers (in this case librarians) understand that they are gaining value for money. All this is very good, it is fair to show a good product and that the terms and conditions are advantageous. However, we know that the bundles of items have a weak point : metadata. The reality is that, in many cases, the bundles are not delivered with the adequate metadata that will allow full access and discoverability by end user and, more importantly for our point, to allow librarians to compare usage and value. It is known, that the resources contained within a bundle may vary, either at the end of a fixed-term agreement, or even during the lifetime of agreement. When metadata describing the content of the bundle is not available, it is impossible to even understand what’s changed. This can make comparisons of value over time impossible. Given the already-tense situation regarding the cost of publications, this has the potential to lead to cancellations.
- The following example is similar but I analyse it differently. In this case the titles seemed to have been deleted from the link resolver’s target. Again in this occasion, a librarian said: ….. Her institution had a subscription to a collection through a multi year agreement and she noticed that some journals were deleted and she was asking for our support clarify the entitlements. I realised that these journals were labelled as the new journals proposed by the content provider. I decided to see what was the situation for other subscribers of the same agreement. Were these journals discoverable at all? So I choose a group of subscribers (10), to the same collection, and I started clicking…For one of them, it was impossible for me to search their holdings so they do not appear on the results.
- Well here the results. I have scored them based on the percentage of titles that were discoverable. Libraries use different system vendors that are connected to their own knowledge bases and link resolvers, so as expected we have different results. Some of the institutions used the same vendor (Vendor B) (these are institutions 2,3,4,6, and 9) but they have different results. The results depend on the targets they have activated. I have also added for information the cost of the individual institutional subscriptions, the cost of pay per view. The libraries belong to different sizes institutions (identified by the Jisc bands) as an indicators of resources available. Only one institution had 100% score. The lowest score is 26 % from “institution 4” where we found only 5 journals out of 19. For “institution 6”, it wasn’t clear where their access were coming from so I was uncertain to score them the same way. We do not know how much the results are influenced positively due to the librarians checking and correcting. Well, I know a bit, I know that Institution 1 expends time checking what their link resolver. They nearly got it. Only one missing. If they have improved their situation manually, it would indicate a hidden cost for libraries when buying bundles. This is just an example and the problem is scalable. How many more titles are affected and nobody know about it? How much institutions are paying for no discoverable items? How many disappointed end user are?, For end users, simply these titles are not there.
- At the end of the day everything we do and everything we don’t is a question of priorities
- This part will refer to the first slide we visit, the one about the story so far and where the different actors of the supply chain are. As mentioned, Last year, the KBART Standing Committee run a survey to identify the obstacles of adoption of the KBART recommendations within content providers. When we asked them “why they haven't used the KBART Phase 2” they replied: no time/other priorities and, no demand from customer base The part that stroke me the most was to learnt about the lack of customer requests. Our assumption was that librarians needed help to argue the benefits of good metadata in an effective way. To support this area we worked with Sero Consulting to produce a paper addressed to librarians. The aim was to elaborated a short document with few bullet points describing arguments that librarians could use during their conversations with content providers to make the customer requests easier. To prepare this paper there were interviews to electronic resources librarians, senior librarians and other library staff. In this case, the results were again surprising: Libraries can often work around the failures in supply and accessibility through their discovery layers, either manually managing lists or with the help of services such as Knowledge Base Plus but libraries are missing opportunities to improve the situation at the source during purchasing and negotiation. Internal priorities are contradictory depending the role of the librarian. In addition, no all librarians are confident on their knowledge of the metadata standards and recommendations that could help on the interaction with suppliers. Finally System Vendors, we have seen in our examples that the performance of the systems provided by the vendors is a mixed picture. For all the examples we have mentioned the librarians contacted the relevant vendor and the KB+ team did it too. The responses were slow and not all the problems were solved. If corrections were carried out, they happened case by case and not as a revision of their data processing. They operate globally so their focus is not just on the UK market. As a result, when metadata issues are reported by an individual institution in the UK, system vendors may not perceive this to be a priority issue.
- Librarians should agreed their needs regarding metadata and use all their interaction points with suppliers (content providers and system vendors) to pass the message across. From Procurement process to conversations with suppliers reps. This can have good results, I am aware of at least one case (regarding eBooks) where a major vendor proved unable or unwilling to comply with what the library consortium viewed as basic standards in metadata and was therefore excluded from the procurement. Services as Knowledge Base Plus has helped to bring more information to the table and break barriers as the believe that accurate and timely metadata is not possible. It is! And this has been possible thanks to a committed team and the support of the community of users. It is a win-win situation, librarians will save time and at the same time it will increase the quality of the metadata they all use. Libraries have the power as customers to influence vendors. Libraries can develop the dialogue around the provision and processing of metadata, both pre- and post-procurement. System vendors need clarity about pain points and to plan changes in their development processes and resourcing. The library community can use existing user groups and can move things forward making sure that current customer’s experiences reach prospective customers. Content providers: Metadata is part of the product and it will influence the view of the customers. Reduction of usage could lead to cancellations. A working metadata supply system can only be achieved if stakeholders step in and see themselves as owners of the problem. Clearly, each actor has somewhat different priorities, and makes a different balance of costs and benefits, but high-quality metadata benefits all stakeholders in the supply and use of library content.
- I did a similar presentation at UKSG that went really well and it was one the most attended breakout sessions. During the sessions we asked attendees to share their main worries related to metadata…47 people do it, using post its. An please do the same using your post its on the table, please give them to me at the end of the session. Thanks. Lets see some examples of what are the worries. Many are around , as said today the performance of system vendors. The impact of the current situation on libraries were also part of the worries we have. Bad metadata is a time consuming issue for librarians. And there were also some worries from the publishers present in the conference. They also have concerns and about the current situation
- There is more, more or less, things I have mentioned today are known issues. There is something in the horizon that may change things and not necessarily positively and that can add another layer of complexity for the sector This is about KBART. Kbart as I said is a well known and used. Last year a new group has been formed, the KBART Automation. This group aims to delivered a set of recommendations to automatise the direct delivery of library holdings from content providers to system mvendors
- The group has delivered their first draft. That is not public. Once they finish working on it the document will be public and open for comments. Basically, under these recommendations, content providers will give to each library a file witll their all accessible content including paid and free without identifying. Holdings will not very much complete. More or less what Elsevier is doing now
- These are the benefits that have been stated by the first draft and the supporters of this initiative. I should say Exlibris is one of them. But there are some risks too…the risks come from me…