2009 Annual ASERL Membership Meeting

Marshall Breeding Director for Innovative Technology and Research Vanderbilt University Library http://www.librarytechnology.org/

Highly abstracted model of computing Displaces the need for local hardware and software Provisioned on demand Metered use of storage and computing cycles Platform-as-a-service Storage-as-a-service
Emerging model for library discovery and automation Increasingly dubbed Web-scale

Lots of non-library Web destinations deliver content to library patrons

Google Scholar Amazon.com Wikipedia Ask.com

Do Library Web sites and catalogs meet the information needs of our users? Do they attract their interest?

Print > Electronic Increasing emphasis on subscribed content, especially articles and databases Strong emphasis on digitizing local collections New generations of library users:
Millennial generation Web savvy Pervasive Web 2.0 concepts

Silos Prevail

Books: Library OPAC (ILS module) Articles: Aggregated content products, ejournal collections OpenURL linking services E-journal finding aids (Often managed by link resolver) Local digital collections Metasearch engines
ETDs, photos, rich media collections

All searched separately

More comprehensive information discovery environments Primary search tool that extends beyond print resources Digital resources cannot be an afterthought Systems designed for e-content only are also problematic Forcing users to use different interfaces depending on type of content becoming less tenable Libraries working toward consolidated user environments that give equal footing to digital and print resources

Bound handwritten catalogs Card Catalogs Library online catalogs OPACs Discovery interfaces Web-scale discovery services

A single point of entry to all the content and services offered by the library
Search:

Single search box Query tools

Did you mean Type-ahead

Relevance ranked results Faceted navigation Enhanced visual displays

Cover art Summaries, reviews,

Recommendation services

Online Catalog
Interface conventions from an earlier Web era Scope: Tied to the ILS and its content domain

Discovery Layer
Modern interface elements Scope: aims to address broad range of components that constitute library collections

AquaBrowser Ex Libris Primo Innovative Interfaces: Encore Serials Solutions: Summon (under development) SirsiDynix Enterprise The Library Corporation: LS2 PAC VUFind (open source) BiblioCommons eXtensible Catalog (under development)

 Tags, user-supplied ratings and reviews Leverage social networking interactions to assist readers in identifying interesting materials: BiblioCommons Leverage use data for a recommendation service of scholarly content based on link resolver data: Ex Libris bX service

Initial products focused on technology

AquaBrowser, Endeca, Primo, Encore, VUfind Mostly locally-installed software

Current phase focused on pre-populated indexes that aim to deliver Web-scale discovery
Summon (Serials Solutions) WorldCat Local (OCLC) EBSCO Discovery Service (EBSCO) Primo Central

Federated Search / Metasearch use real-time queries against multiple information targets No centralized index presentation of dynamic results Shallow results -- only a few results initially fetched from each target Difficult to calculate relevancy Performance challenges

ILS Data

Search:

Digital Collections

Search Results

ProQuest

EBSCOhost

Bibliography

MLA

ABC-CLIO

Real-time query and responses

ILS Data

Search:

Local Index

Digital Collections

Search Results

ProQuest

MetaSearch Engine

EBSCOhost

Bibliography

MLA

ABC-CLIO

Real-time query and responses

ILS Data

Search:

Digital Collections

Consolidated Index

ProQuest

Search Results

EBSCOhost

Bibliography

MLA

ABC-CLIO

Pre-built harvesting and indexing

Pre-populated indexes Web-scale

Exploits the full depth and breadth of library collections Beyond the bounds of the local librarys collection Targets the universe of objective, vetted library content

Includes full-text indexing to the fullest extent possible

Indexing the full corpus of information available globally

Google aims to address all the worlds information

Or at least major portions

Discovery Layer Products for libraries aim to address all content collected by libraries:

Not quite comprehensive partial harvesting of any given resource Print Remotely access electronic content: e-journals, e-books, databases, licensed and open access. Local special collections: digital and print.

Addresses the comprehensive body of content held within library collections Comprehensive, unified

New-generation interface Harvested local content

ILS metadata Institutional repositories, ETDs, Digital Collection platforms

Vendor-supplied indexes of library content

E-journals, databases, e-books
Full-text and metadata corresponding to e-content subscriptions

Book collections beyond local library collections

Entering post-metadata search era Increasing opportunities to search the full contents Google Library Print, Google Publisher, Open Content Alliance, government publications, etc. High-quality metadata will improve search precision Commercial search providers already offer search inside the book and searching across the full text of large book collections Not currently available through most library search environments Deep search highly improved by high-quality metadata
Will be an important feature of projects such as HathiTrust

Now viewed as separate problem Many interdependencies Current model of feeding discovery systems from many underlying repositories
ILS / e-journal collections / collections of digital objects

Will models of resource management change to consolidate the repositories? Realign Discovery and management?

Traditional Proprietary Commercial ILS

Millennium, Symphony, Polaris

Traditional Open Source ILS

Evergreen, Koha

Clean slate automation framework (SOA, enterprise-ready)

Ex Libris URM, OLE Project

Cloud-based automation system

WorldCat Local (+circ, acq, license management)

Beyond selecting one brand from an assortment of similar products Several conceptually diverse options Companies and projects now competing on innovation