The Lay of the Land: Libraries at the Crossroads

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The Lay of the Land Libraries at the Crossroads

• Roy Tennant
• California Digital Library

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Goals

• Raise questions
• Spark imaginations
• Motivate
• Encourage professional self-criticism

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More Specifically

• I will focus on our primary and most shameful
  failure our inability to provide an easy and
  effective information locating tool
• Remember only librarians like to search,
  everyone else likes to find
• However, we are failing even to do things we have
  explicitly tried to do
• Lets take a look at the evidence

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• 260 Berkley, CA Library Solutions Press,
  c1993
• 300 vii,134 p. ill., maps 28 cm
• 500 Includes bibliographic references (p.
  32-35) and index
• 650 0 Internet
• 250 1st ed
• 260 Berkley, CA Library Solutions Press,
  c1993
• 300 viii, 134 p. ill., maps 29 cm
• 500 Includes bibliographic references (p.
  32-35) and index
• 500 "An earlier version of this book was
  published as a
• workbook in support of hands-on Internet
  training
• workshops."
• 650 0 Internet
• 250 1st ed
• 260 Berkeley, CA Library Solutions Press,
  c1993
• 300 viii, 134 p. ill. ,maps 28 cm
• 504 Includes bibliographical references (p.
  32-35) and index

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Typical Searches

• Known Item
• A Few Good Things
• Comprehensive

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Typical Searches Known Item

• The good searches can be limited to a particular
  field author, title, etc.
• The bad limiting to a particular field doesnt
  always act the way you expect
• The ugly

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The Really Ugly
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Typical SearchesA Few Good Things

• The one type of search we have so far ignored in
  library system design
• A type of search that we can do something about
  today
• Bring Google-style relevance to library catalogs

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Typical Searches Comprehensive

• Most library catalogs hide many things available
  via regional cooperative or ILL
• It is difficult, if not impossible, to search all
  appropriate journal databases
• Most libraries do not provide good access to gray
  literature and web sites
• Subject headings are often unintuitive, and
  catalogs give no guidance
• Catalogs give no chapter-level access to book
  content

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Some of the Things Most Users Care About

• What information resources are accessible to them
• What they have to offer, in more detail
  (contents, index, cover copy, etc.)
• What others think about them
• How much pain they must endure to get them
• What they can expect when they show up
• What they must do with them when theyre done

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Some of the Things Most Users Do Not Care About

• Many of the things we care about
• Where the information comes from
• Who is responsible for providing it
• Quality, if it means spending a lot of time and
  effort to get it
• Differences between printings of the exact same
  book
• The height of a book (in centimeters!)

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What Many Users Expect

• A simple search box
• Automatic filters, sorts, and groupings, and/or
  some that they can apply
• Fault-tolerant search systems (If you cant give
  me exactly what I asked for, do your best to give
  me what I want)
• Lets see how fault-tolerant we are

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Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome -- Africa
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome --
epidemiology -- Africa Acquired Immunodeficiency
Syndrome -- transmission AIDS (Disease) --
Africa AIDS (Disease) -- Africa AIDS (Disease)
-- Etiology AIDS (Disease) -- Public opinion
AIDS (Disease) -- Social aspects AIDS (Disease)
in mass media Arts and society -- History --
20th century Culture -- Philosophy Ethnic arts
Marginality, Social -- History -- 20th century
Mass Media Minorities in art Prejudice Public
Opinion Race Relations Racism
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Recap on Library Catalogs

• We cannot claim to support any of the top three
  main types of searches well
• Our systems work inconsistently and demonstrably
  incoherently
• Other bibliographic search systems (e.g., Amazon)
  demonstrate how pitiful our systems are to our
  users
• We have taken very few steps toward fixing our
  broken systems

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What We Have

• A computerized card catalog focused on inventory
  control
• Non-standard database records
• Systems that dont interoperate
• In union catalogs, multiple catalog records for
  the same book
• An AI database Tower of Babel
• Haphazard attempts to provide access to web sites
• Limited experiments providing access to gray
  literature

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What We Must Do

• We should design our systems for 80 of our user
  needs, not 20
• We must design the public view of our catalogs
  for searching, not inventory control
• We should stop worrying about things that dont
  matter (e.g., book measurements) and start
  worrying about things that do (e.g., our
  inability to use one record per book)
• We must think imaginatively and critically about
  how to design useful search systems
• We need to design systems to integrate access,
  not fracture it

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The Road Not (Yet) Taken

• Create effective methods to put users in touch
  with what they need, wherever it can be found
• Design fault-tolerant, multi-purpose systems
• Build for interoperability
• Strive for the Holy Grail of Librarianship
  one-stop searching for everything

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What Most Users Want
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How We Can Give it To Them
The User Interface
Online Reference
The Integration Engine
OAI- Compliant Archives
Google
WorldCat on Steroids
Serial Databases
Digital Library Collections
Local Circulation Systems
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Source ARL Statistics
http//searchlight.cdlib.org/cgi-bin/searchlight
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The Integration Engine

• Requirements
• Parse the query for each database
• Sort, organize, and de-dup the results
• Rank according to perceived relevance
• Be fault-tolerant (do the best it can with what
  its given)
• Targeted search engines may be better
• Specific topic areas
• A few good things vs. Comprehensive

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Concluding Thoughts

• Were failing at our own goals
• We need to think imaginatively about our
  challenges
• No library can do this alone
• Regional cooperatives are the smallest unit for
  tackling this problem
• A regional cooperative with vision and guts could
  lead the way for the rest of us