Trends in Library automation and digital libraries

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Trends in Library automation and digital libraries

• Marshall Breeding
• Director for Innovative Technologies and Research
• Vanderbilt University
• http//staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/breeding

Redefining Libraries Web 2.0 and other
Challenges May 2007 Xiamen, China
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Business Landscape

• Library Journal Automated System Marketplace
• An Industry redefined (April 1, 2007)
• An increasingly consolidated industry
• VC and Private Equity playing a stronger role
  then ever before
• Moving out of a previous phase of fragmentation
  where many companies expend energies producing
  decreasingly differentiated systems in a limited
  marketplace
• Narrowing of product options
• Open Source opportunities rise to challenge
  stranglehold of traditional commercial model

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Library Automation MA History
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Consolidation among Libraries for automation

• More libraries banding together to share
  automation environment
• Reduce overhead for maintaining systems that have
  decreasing strategic importance
• Need to focus technical talent on activities that
  have more of an impact on the mission of the
  library
• Pooled resources for technical processing
• Single library ILS implementations becoming less
  defensible
• Essential for libraries to gain increased
  leverage relative to large companies

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Diverse Business Activities

• Many ways to expand business in ways that
  leverage library automation expertise
• Non-ILS software
• Retrospective conversion services
• RFID or AMH
• Network Consulting Services
• Content products

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Key Business Perspective

• Given the relative parity of library automation
  systems, choosing the right automation partner is
  more important than splitting hairs over
  functionality.
• Understanding of library issues
• Vision and forward-looking development

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Product and Technology Trends
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Current state of the Integrated Library System

• The core ILS focused mostly on print resources
  and traditional library workflow processes.
• Add-ons available for dealing with electronic
  content
• Link resolvers
• Metasearch environments
• Electronic Resource Management
• A loosely integrated environment
• Labor-intensive implementation and maintenance
• Most are must have products for academic
  libraries with significant collections of
  e-content

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Library OPAC

• Evolved from card catalogs and continues to be
  bound by the constraints of that legacy.
• Complex and rich in features
• Interfaces often do not compare favorably with
  alternatives available on the Web
• Print materials becoming a smaller component of
  the librarys overall collections.

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State of the Library OPAC?
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Comprehensive Automation

• The goal of the Integrated Library Systems
  involves the automation of all aspects of the
  librarys internal operations and to provide key
  services to library users.

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ILS Broad Overview

• Business automation system
• Automates each aspect of a librarys operations
• Smaller libraries may implement only selected
  modules
• Tightly integrated modules

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ILS characteristics

• Shared bibliographic database
• Holdings records
• Copy records
• Circulation transaction file
• Patron database
• Acquisitions vendor database, financial
  transaction files
• Serials volume holdings records issue check-in
  records summary holdings, routing, etc

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OpenURL Link Resolver

• Context-sensitive Linking
• Links to resources built dynamically

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Benefits for library users

• A more seamless and unified interface to assist
  users with their research using library resources
• Need to present the user with the appropriate
  copy
• Ability to offer other services and options
• Multiple copies available for any given document
  or resource

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Benefits for Library Staff

• Static URLs becoming untenable in electronic
  publishing environment
• Placing static links in 856 fields increasingly
  untenable
• URLs change direct deep linking unstable
• Libraries change sources for content
• Single point of management for article databases
  and e-journal holdings
• Can be populated and updated by providers such as
  Serial Solutions

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More than linking citation to full text

• Holdings look-up in OPACS
• Requests for document delivery
• Interlibrary Loan request
• Related works more by this author

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The down side of dynamic reference linking

• More options, more complexity
• No guarantee that links created by a resolving
  application will be successful
• Eg TOC instead of full text
• Users may not always understand what is happening
• Maintaining the Link Resolver database

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Reference linking framework

• A database populated with data about the
  librarys electronic resources
• What aggregations the library owns
• Which titles available in each aggregation
• What years available for each title
• Which stand-alone e-journals?
• AI databases
• Metadata harvested from a citation and passed
  through the OpenURL syntax
• A resolver that turns metadata into a specific
  link to the appropriate link
• Resolver can provide links to other services
• ILL/Document Delivery request
• Holdings Look-up in library catalog
• Web search

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OpenURL Framework

• Linking Products Applications that rely on the
  OpenURL specification
• Sources -- a resource capable of generating an
  OpenURL
• Targets Web-based resources capable of being
  linked to in an OpenURL environment

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Link Server or Resolver

• A server that resolves an OpenURL into one or
  more services.
• Takes into consideration the local context of the
  user
• What content is available through subscriptions
  provided by the institution?
• What content is available within each database or
  full-text aggregation
• Other services available print holdings
  document delivery bookstore purchase

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OpenURL

• A de facto standard for reference linking
• A syntax to create web-transportable packages of
  metadata or identifiers about an information
  object
• Not a static link
• Transports metadata
• Relies on a local resolver, which makes use of
  data carried on the OpenURL to perform services

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Linking Products

• SFX -- Ex Libris
• WebBridge -- Innovative
• 360 Link -- Serials Solutions
• LinkSource -- EBSCO
• 1Cate -- Openly Informatics / OCLC

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Digital asset management

• Products for creating and managing collections of
  digital content
• Utility for creating metadata
• Dublin Core
• VRA
• Other library / discipline-specific formats

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Library-specific products

• CONTENTdm OCLC
• Digitool Ex Libris
• Hyperion SirsiDynix
• Luna Imaging

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Metasearching / Federated Searching

• Allows the user to enter a search once to search
  multiple databases
• All selected resources searched simultaneously
• Single user interface
• Results presented through the metasearch
  application not in their native interface

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Metasearch groupings

• Resources organized by the library into groups
• Typically subject based
• Relieves the users from having to know what
  products cover what topics
• Generally impractical to search all products in
  each query

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Common metaserach features

• Presents common interface for formulating query
• Keyword combinations and options
• Boolean operators
• Results interfiled or separated by source
• Deduplication of results
• Sort and relevancy options
• Customization to blend with librarys Web site
  color scheme, fonts, layout, banner, logo, etc.

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Authentication

• Needs to work for remote users
• Interface with campus authentication environment
• Interacts with proxy servers

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Other Features

• General tool for managing access to electronic
  resources
• Links to native interfaces
• Select resources by subject
• Link to native interfaces
• Detailed information about each resource

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Technical challenge

• How to perform search and retrieval among many
  separate information resources that operate in
  fundamentally different ways
• Target resources vary significantly
• Abstract and Indexing (AI) databases
• Full Text resources
• Library Catalogs
• Specialized databases
• No single search and retrieval protocol used
  among the common library information resources

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Limitations

• Not all resources can participate in metasearch
  environment
• Shallow result sets returned from each target
• Difficult to achieve true relevancy
• Slow Performance

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Architecture and Technology Components

• Take advantage of search and retrieval protocols
  when possible
• Z39.50 (mostly library catalogs)
• Web services
• XML gateways
• SQL interfaces
• Proprietary API (Applications Programming
  Interface)
• HTML Parsing

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Technology

• Connectors or source packages that understand how
  to send queries to and receive results from each
  resource
• All results converted into a unified record
  structure
• Application component for managing results
• Web interface for presenting results

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Moving forward

• Transition to an era of next-generation library
  interfaces

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Traditional Library Search Model

• Provide a full featured OPAC
• Give the user a screen full of search options
• Assume that researchers will begin with library
  resources
• Reliance on Bibliographic Instruction

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Troubling statistic

• Where do you typically begin your search for
  information on a particular topic?
• College Students Response
• 89 Search engines (Google 62)
• 2 Library Web Site (total respondents -gt 1)
• 2 Online Database
• 1 E-mail
• 1 Online News
• 1 Online bookstores
• 0 Instant Messaging / Online Chat

OCLC. Perceptions of Libraries and Information
Resources (2005) p. 1-17.
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New Library Search Model

• Dont count on users beginning their research
  with library catalogs or Web site
• Consider the librarys Web site as a destination
• Make it a compelling and attractive destination
  that uses will want to explore more.
• Web users have a low tolerance for ineffective
  and clunky interfaces

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Library Discovery Model A
Web
Library Web Site / Catalog
Library as search Destination
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Library Discovery Model B

• Do not give up on library search technologies!
• Libraries must also build their own discovery,
  search, and access services
• Effective, elegant, powerful
• Once users discover your library, give them
  outstanding services
• Catalog search, federated search,
  context-sensitive linking, etc.

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Library Discovery Model C

• Expose library content and services through
  non-library interfaces
• Campus portals, courseware systems, e-learning
  environments
• County and municipal portals and e-government
• Other external content aggregators RSS, etc
• Web services is the essential enabling technology
  for the delivery of library content and services
  to external applications.
• Library community lags years behind other IT
  industries in adoption of SOA and Web services.

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Working toward next generation library interfaces

• Redefinition of the library catalog
• More comprehensive information discovery
  environments
• Better information delivery tools
• More powerful search capabilities
• More elegant presentation

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Comprehensive Search Service

• More like OAI
• Problems of scale diminished
• Problems of cooperation persist

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Replacement Search Interfaces

• Endeca Guided Search
• AquaBrowser Library

Are library users satisfied with native ILS
interfaces?
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Replacement OPACs

• Endeca Guided Navigation
• AquaBrowser Library
• Common thread
• Decoupled interface
• Mass export of catalog data
• Alternative search engine
• Alternative interface

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Expanded discovery and delivery tools

• Ex Libris Primo (in development)
• Encore from Innovative Interfaces (in
  development)
• Common threads
• Decoupled interface
• Comprehensive indexes that span multiple and
  diverse information resources
• Alternative interface

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Library-developed solutions

• eXtensible Catalog
• University of Rochester River Campus Libraries
• Financial support from the Andrew W. Mellon
  Foundation
• http//www.extensiblecatalog.info/

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Redefinition of library catalogs and interfaces

• Traditional notions of the library catalog are
  being questioned
• Its no longer enough to provide a catalog
  limited to print resources
• Digital resources cannot be an afterthought
• Forcing users to use different interfaces
  depending on type of content becoming less
  tenable
• Libraries working toward consolidated search
  environments that give equal footing to digital
  and print resources

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Interface expectations

• Millennial gen library users are well acclimated
  to the Web and like it.
• Used to relevancy ranking
• The good stuff should be listed first
• Users tend not to delve deep into a result list
• Good relevancy requires a sophisticated approach,
  including objective matching criteria
  supplemented by popularity and relatedness
  factors.

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Interface expectations (cont)

• Very rapid response. Users have a low tolerance
  for slow systems
• Rich visual information book jacket images,
  rating scores, etc.
• Let users drill down through the result set
  incrementally narrowing the field
• Faceted Browsing
• Drill-down vs up-front Boolean or Advanced
  Search
• gives the users clues about the number of hits in
  each sub topic.
• Navigational Bread crumbs
• Ratings and rankings

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Global vs Local

• How do library collections relate to the global
  realm
• Will mass digitization replace local library
  collections?
• The global arena excels at discovery
• The local arena focuses on content delivery
• All the global content discovery tools point to
  locally managed content.

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Multi-layered information discovery

• Global Google
• Institutional / Regional Primo
• Granular Individual catalogs and repositories
• Broad -gt Precise
• Offer both the ability to find a few good
  things and to find exactly the right things
  (and all of them)
• Appropriate avenues for both the undergraduate
  learner and the serious scholar.

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Questions and Discussion