Points of Pain, Peculiar Possibilities, & A Patron Paradise

1. Points of Pain, Peculiar Possibilities, & A Patron Paradise or, A slightly arbitrary set of hair-brained ideas • Roy Tennant • California Digital Library

2. Pilgrimage to Mecca

3. Life in the ‘Hood • Our users are increasingly using the Internet for their information needs…can you say “Google”? • As the younger generation grows to adulthood, library funding and support may be in jeopardy • We’re dying out here — even if it isn’t immediately apparent • But not all gloom and doom — signs of dissatisfaction w/Internet information offers us a window of opportunity • We can and should trade on our reputation

4. What You Can Do For Us • In a nutshell: make every library LOOK HUGE and FEEL PERSONAL • Build infrastructure and services that no single library can build — create BUILDING BLOCKS from which we can create services • Know when to be out front and when to let us be out front • Offer compelling central services that drive users to their local library

5. What Can We Do? • Out Google Google: • Return Google results along with a good deal more • Build on our strengths: • Centralized metadata (WorldCat) • Dispersed service points (local libraries) • Think imaginatively • Ripoff good ideas from wherever they can be found

6. The Basic Questions • What do libraries want? • What do library users want? • How can we get that for them (us)?

7. What Libraries Want • To provide for the information needs of a clientele • To build useful collections and provide effective services • To be used

8. What Library Users Want • To find what they want • To find as much or as little as they need • To experience as little pain as possible • To not have their time wasted • To have the option to control their experience and make informed decisions • To be effectively advised

9. Basic User Truths • Only librarians like to search, everyone else likes to find • A cite in the hand is worth 10 in the database • Good enough is just that • Pain avoidance is a powerful motivator

10. Points of Pain • Library catalogs suck as information finding tools • There are too many possible sources to search them separately • There is little advice about which resource to search • There is no advice about which is better (we know, but we’re not telling)

11. Why Library Catalogs Fail as Information Finding Tools • They are unable to search the entire universe of information • Local catalogs often lack books that can be requested • They have too little information about items • Most are Unable to accept multiple metadata formats • Many have hostile user interfaces (complexity is often a sign of lazy or incompetent design) • Union catalogs often have multiple records for the same item (which to request?)

14. What Better Case for FRBR? • FRBR: Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records, from IFLA • A recasting of bibliographic description into levels: • Work • Expression (translations) • Manifestation (editions) • Item (copies) • Both RLG and OCLC are experimenting with it

17. Integration Engine Making the Pie

19. Making the Pie: Metadata • Metadata: cataloging by those paid better than librarians • Metadata: Structured information about an object or collection of objects • We must become very, very proficient with metadata — creating, harvesting, transforming, serving; your Metadata Switch is very important work • MARC is just the beginning, and unless we’re careful, will be too limiting; we must be proficient with Dublin Core, MODS, METS, etc.

21. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text

23. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored Project Profile MODS record UC Press record Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

25. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored Project Profile Userqueries MODS record UC Press record Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

26. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored Resultsin XML XSLT Project Profile MODS record User requests book UC Press record Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

27. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Javaservlet Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored User requestsbook segment Project Profile MODS record METS record in XML UC Press record XSLT Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

28. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Javaservlet Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored XSLT Project Profile Booksegmentreturned MODS record UC Press record Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

29. Methods for Encompassing Resources • “Ingesting” — centralized by an individually tailored process • “Harvesting” — centralized by a process applicable to an entire class of resources • “Crawling” — software-based HTTP fetching • “Dynamically Queried” — broadcast search at the moment of user need

31. Making the Pie Principles • We never metadata we didn’t like (metadata R Us) • Decentralize metadata maintenance whenever possible • Centralize metadata searching whenever possible — Federate, then slice and dice • Metadata can be both mined and enhanced

32. Slicing the Pie • Slicing can be pre-selected or dynamic • By: • region (e.g., Australia) • topic area • format type • ease and rapidity of access

33. When to Slice the Pie • Before searching: • Select general topic area • After searching: • Results clustering • Search within results

34. Slicing the Pie Principles • Strive to serve only that which will feed the hunger • Few will want the whole pie; some will want it sliced; others will want to slice it themselves • Slicing must happen regardless of how it was made

35. Serving the Pie • Provide ways for users to “drill down” in search results • Guide the user to useful subject terms • Cluster search results • Rank by: • Numbers of holding libraries • Usage, e.g., “click through count” • Weights assigned by librarians, or reflected in book reviews

36. Serving the Pie • We need ways to keep librarians happy without enraging patrons (e.g., “advanced search” option) • Searching is an iterative process • A good search result is not the end, but the beginning (e.g., provide ability to format a bibliography, download or print the citations)

37. Serving the Pie Principles • Best served by those who know the consumer • Global services can (and should be) locally branded to maximize service delivery options for end users • Software “skins” are not new

41. Things We Must Do • No more business as usual! • Out Google Google (Google w/ added value) • Get good at sucking things up • Be good producers and consumers of metadata • Work together more broadly and deeply • Be user focused, but not user driven • Hire out of our ranks, read out of our profession, get out more!

42. Recap • Help us LOOK HUGE and FEEL PERSONAL • Think building blocks, extensibility, flexibility, skins, richer and more diverse metadata • Federate, then slice and dice • Free WorldCat!