Records fit for discovery A project briefing from OCLC Research / RLG Partnership

1. Records fit for discoveryA project briefing from OCLC Research / RLG Partnership Merrilee Proffitt Senior Program Officer PACSCL Something New for Something Old 4 December 2008

2. High expectations • Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) • Mellon Foundation • National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) • National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) • Timing • Library of Congress On the Record recommendations • ARL Special Collections Working Group • Continued importance of special collections to the RLG Partnership

3. Working in two ways • Looking to expand/enhance OCLC services to meet the needs of archives and special collections • WorldCat Local Special Collections Task Force • “Missing Materials” prototype • New hire in OCLC Research: Jackie Dooley • Undertake a program of work focusing on “end to end” flow of archival lifecycle

4. ACQUIRE APPRAISE SURVEY DISCOVER Program of work: Mobilizing Unique Materials SELECT DESCRIBE DELIVER DISCLOSE INFLUENCE ENHANCE End-to-End Archival Processing Flow

5. Mobilizing Unique Materials • Assess Archival Survey Tools • Analyze Existing EAD Creation and Editing Tools • Define the State of Holdings and Description for Archives • Define the State of "Hidden Collections" for Archives • Analyze Specialized Discovery Environments to Optimize Discovery of Archival Materials • Synthesize the Current State of Delivery Practices for Archives and Special Collections • Increase the Scale of Special Collections Digitization

6. Define the State of Holdings and Description for Archives • MARC records as represented in WorldCat • 1.03 million records under archival control (unpublished materials, excluding theses and dissertations) • Determine what’s there, document what we find • Comparing records to DACS single level minimum and single level optimum requirements

11. DACS requirements, a first view Title 245 $a 21% of records lack 10% of records with a “high” encoding level lack Extent 300 $a (magnitude) almost all have 300 $f 70% of records lack 300 $b 92% of records lack Name of creator (can be found in 7xx also, but) 100$a 43% of records lack 110$a 77% of records lack

12. DACS requirements, a first view Scope and content 520$a 30% of records lack Conditions governing access and use 506 $a 89% of records lack 540 $a 93% of records lack

13. Analyze Specialized Discovery Environments to Optimize Discovery of Archival Materials • Synthesis of user studies (in process) • Patterns in findings about users’ desires/behavior: • full-text or keyword searching • “aboutness” - subject searching • relevance ranking (keyword? title? creator? geographic location? date? extent?) • “existence” - expectations of comprehensive coverage • distinctions: what will be found where? • reliable information; trust; credibility • Most studies done as part of a redesign

14. Some possible outcomes • If names are important…looking for ways to leverage and control uncontrolled names • If extent is important…looking for ways to normalize wild and woolly extent statements • If titles are important…make titles more user friendly • If subjects are important (and absent)…find ways to derive subject terms, look to end user tagging • If rights and policy information is important…find easy ways to bring this to the surface

15. In an increasingly online discovery environment… Even humanities faculty depend less on direct assistance from the library Increasingly autonomous in using online sources (Housewright, Ross and Roger Schoenfeld, Ithaka’s 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education, August 2008.) Important to ensure that descriptions of collections are fit for use – in and out of the reading room