The MALIBU Search Engine: Exploring User Needs in a Hybrid World

1. The MALIBU Search Engine: Exploring User Needs in a Hybrid World Jessie M.N. Hey Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group Project MALIBU – University of Southampton Libraries jmnh@ecs.soton.ac.uk The Future is Hybrid British Library 1/11/2000

2. Focus of workshop • Searching the hybrid library • Developing the MALIBU search engine (GIGA) • An example • Towards our vision With Valeda Dent (KCL project manager) and Michael Cave (Oxford technical officer)

3. Creating the hybrid library • To bring together a wide range of new alternative technologies plus the electronic products and services already in libraries, and the historical functions of our local, physical libraries, into wellorganised, accessible hybrid libraries (JISC circular 3/97)

4. Recent hybrid library statistics! Two extremes: • Southampton libraries have 42,752m of shelving, of which 35,300m or 83% were occupied at the time of the measure. This is roughly equivalent to the distance from Southampton to Portsmouth. • Southampton IAM group prints 10,000 pages every 3.5 weeks searching the web, using up a laser printer toner cartridge

5. Music resources room example • Bringing CDs from department to new Electronic Information Services Wing for greater organisation • Videos, tapes and CDs and equipment • Close to music books and scores • Exploring more efficient ways of delivering eg digitization experiments (with IAM group and archives) of Norman del Mar sound archive • Storing on IAM group 200GB server • Student project exploring bandwidth issues • Exploring integrating CD listening with digital working

6. What needs adding? • Survey showed demand for more integrated access to relevant resources • To search out web based resources as well as traditional catalogues • A prime candidate for experimenting with our MALIBU search engine

7. Questionnaires to Humanities Staff All kind of resources used e.g.: • E-journals, abstracts and microforms • Radio and online newspapers • Card catalogues and archives • Librarians and students • General and very specialised web resources

8. MALIBU search engine • Developed from preprototype search engine for the Humanities supported by user and librarian testing and reviews of searching methods for paper and digital resources, both local and remote Modelling the hybrid library: Project MALIBU JMN Hey and A Wissenburg The New Review of Information and Library Research 1998 103-110

9. Search Agent Objectives • To expand horizons for Humanities staff and students in a managed hybrid library environment • Both to search relevant web based resources in addition to traditional catalogues • And archives and other ‘hidden’ databases in addition to the web • To develop a prototype providing searching facilities across a selected no. of heterogeneous priority targets

10. A Global Information Gathering Agent • Consists of a series of independent agents, which can communicate through a meta-agent • Aim - flexible and efficient system • Degree of user profiling – matching users at Oxford, Southampton and KCL • Options to change targets searched and to work with results

11. GIGA

12. Your First Name Your Surname Please provide a Passwordit will not be shown as you type Please enter your Password a second time Please give your e-mail address(optional) Your Department Your User Type An introductory profile is set up but can be amended Malibu's Search Agent Signup Welcome! Please provide the following information about yourself. This information will help the system to set up a personal user profile for you. Please click on "Submit" (below) when you are finished entering your information, or "Clear" to start again.

13. A Personal Profile eg in History might include: • Book catalogues (Southampton and COPAC) • JSTOR history and American journals • Papers of Palmerston and Wellington (at Southampton) • Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (at King’s College, London) • Refugee studies Catalogue (at Oxford) • Survey of Jewish Archives (at Southampton) • Google search engine • Wifred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive

14. The next stage of exploration • The Southampton Reserve Collection has some 1st World War materials and some were digitized for a previous project in English and posted to a local site • We want to look further afield: • Southampton’s WebCat • JSTOR digitized History journals • Perhaps other catalogues and archives • A web search engine and different media

15. Amend profile to search relevant databases • Southampton WebCat • Oxford’s OLIS catalogue • COPAC (The union catalogue of the Consortium of University Research Libraries. Free bibliographic information on over 6 million titles) • Google search engine • JSTOR history journals • Papers of Senior UK Defence Personnel (catalogue launched in Southampton June 2000) • Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive • Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (at King’s College, London) And rank by priority

16. Researching the 1st world war trenches Some marked records from a Southampton GIGA search (saved or emailed): • Wilfred Owen Archive at Oxford • Audio of daily routine in front line trenches • Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archive (KCL) • Sketches showing layout of trenches • Google Search Engine • Trenches on the Web – reference library • Oxford OLIS Catalogue • Lads: love poetry of the trenches compiled 1998 • Southampton catalogue • In the trenches of Stalingrad pub. 1948 NB No matches in JSTOR journals or Southampton online archives this time

17. Following on: • The Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive looks useful – so click on the information button What does it comprise? • Virtually all of Owen’s original MSS for his war poetry, from various sources • 18 issues of The Hydra • 20 Photos of Owen • A selection of letters Owen wrote during his war service • Official records related to Owen from PRO • Selection of general material from war (photos, audio, video), from IWM archives • Relevant current day video & photographic material • Other contemporary material (e.g. postcards)

18. Exploring in depth • Explore a few resources: • ahew4 Audio of Smell of trenches. by L. J. Hewitt • amci1 Audio of Trench life. Shaving and washing by T. W. McIndoe • aoxl12 Audio of Daily routine in front line trenches. St by H. Oxley • aoxl18 Audio of Sanitary arrangements in trenches. by H. Oxley • aoxl5 Audio of Journey to front line at Ypres Salient, by H. Oxley • Link to the database for more detailed context based searching http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/

19. And from our web search engine:An Internet History of the Great Warhttp://www.worldwar1.com “one of the best online resources for teaching and learning about the First World War."Scout Report for Social Sciences8-Nov-1997

20. A useful exemplar • Currently investigating the impact of the search engine and its place within the user’s and library’s information landscape • Analysing advantages and disadvantages of technical model • Some conclusions: • Can allow for easy distributed development • But may need to accept less than full features – use as a pointer • Major challenge of database subscriptions and features not remaining constant

21. Vision – to plug in new agents as databases become available or in demand • eg free Eprints software just being made available from our IAM group to institutions and departments to self archive scholarly research literature (modelled on Los Alamos preprint archive) • Could then add a database to search very recent work as well as traditionally published work together

22. The ideas of GIGA look forward to: • Having your own intelligent agent (your virtual ‘hybrarian’) to exploit to the full well organised and accessible libraries • Whether far afield or on your doorstep • Recent tests have shown users are enthusiastic to discover new resources and recommend new resources for inclusion

23. The MALIBU Search Engine: Exploring User Needs in a Hybrid World Be our guest at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/malibu Jessie M.N. Hey Project MALIBU – University of Southampton Libraries jmnh@ecs.soton.ac.uk The Future is Hybrid British Library 1/11/2000