The Million Book Project: Removing Obstacles to Use, Satisfaction, & Success Denise Troll Covey Principal Librarian for Special Projects – Carnegie Mellon LIDA 2004 – Dubrovnik, Croatia

Overview Library users & use in the digital age Results of national & international surveys Results of research Barriers to use, satisfaction, & success Million Book Project response

What Academic Users Want Personal control & ubiquitous access to comprehensive information 90% want convenient, speedy, easy access Only thing they want more is quality information 61% prefer remote access to full text Express unmet need for electronic resources twice as often as for print resources 31% don’t want to go to the physical library

What Academic Libraries Provide Need for personal control & convenient, speedy, easy access to information Service provided by the library 24% often can’t get information when needed 50% to 90% students & faculty perceive a gap between Association of Research Libraries LibQual+ Survey 2002 & 2003 35% failure rate accomplishing tasks on web sites LibQual+ Survey 2002 & 2003

Priority Problems Enough time Knowing what library resources are available Accessing & using online library resources Difficulty navigating & searching library web sites Issues with the design, functionality, & access restrictions of licensed online library resources Problems with proxy servers & VPN Jakob Nielsen 35% failure rate accomplishing tasks on web sites

What Academic Users Are Doing Students & faculty trust library more than Internet 35% use library less now than two years ago 86% library meets most of their information needs 80% Internet has changed their use of the library 73% of students use the Internet more than the library Trust library more than the Internet, but students & faculty

Students & Faculty Use Internet search engines because they are easier, faster, & more convenient than using a library or other web site 48% start with Internet search engine (54% ugrads) 33% start with library web site (28% ugrads) 33% do not get most of the information they need from their physical or digital library 54% access library resources remotely (68% ugrads) Trust library more than the Internet, but students & faculty

Information Seeking in the Library % of information seeking time spent in physical library Trust library more than the Internet, but students & faculty

Undergraduate Student Behaviors 48% use online resources all or most of the time 80% use the library fewer than 3 hours per week 40% use Internet for every assignment 11% use library web site for every assignment Efficiency is more important than relevance 11% are not concerned about authoritativeness Ease & speed of finding information can be as important in satisfying the user as the utility or appropriateness of the information found

Undergraduate Student Behaviors 69% live off campus 59% use home computer > school computers 90% access the web from their home computer 80% use the library for web access, but only 20% prefer this access point 80% prefer remote access

Undergraduate Student Beliefs 96% information found on the surface web is adequate for class assignments 11% don’t care about the authority of information 46% other web sites have better information than the library web site 11% are not concerned about authoritativeness Ease & speed of finding information can be as important in satisfying the user as the utility or appropriateness of the information found

What Users Want Personal control & access to information Remote access to full text More & easier to use online resources Way to identify appropriate resources & to get updates on available resources More books, including out of print books More back issues of journals Customizable user interface More comfortable library facilities Ease Speed Convenience

Provide Small collection Web site & portal VPN & Shibboleth Automated Resource Finder & SFX Online reserves, reference, renewal, holds, ILL, direct borrowing from other libraries Self check out 1,000,000 printed books 185 databases 18,000 electronic books 13,000 electronic journals Library portal Facilitate easy, convenient access to key services Push relevant information to the appropriate people Provide customizable interface Institutional repository

Priority Problems Enough time Personal control & access to information Barely meeting needs of graduate students Not meeting desires of undergraduate students Problems accessing & using online library resources Library catalog & databases are not easy to use Difficulty navigating the library web site Difficulty picking appropriate resources & keeping up to date Physical library & ILL are inconvenient Web site information is less useful for undergraduates 78% use web site weekly We are barely meeting minimal service levels for graduate students Service adequacy gap We are not meeting the desires & expectations of undergraduate students Service superiority gap Most in need of improvement – personal control

What Users Are Doing Database searches Catalog searches Full text retrieval Circulation

What Users Are Doing Virtual visits Printing Physical visits Photocopying

What Users Are Doing Reserves Reference Digital Traditional

Graduate Students Most important factors in determining search tool 93% Quality of info – 46% Speed 67% Convenience – 41% Ease of use Seeking & obtaining information 1st Internet search engine 2nd Library web site 3rd Human resource 4th Physical library Using the web is twice as easy & convenient as using online library resources Using library e-resources is about as easy & convenient as turning to a human resource - Professor, classmate, or librarian Half use ILL; half of users think it’s inconvenient Using the physical library is not easy & convenient 70% from web – 27% from library resource Low service adequacy from LibQual+ & impact of journal cancellations & changed access privileges to e-resources at neighboring university Concerned about level of service Like faculty, need access to journals, but lack financial resources & professional network Like undergraduates, often have short deadlines; interlibrary loan is slow

Graduate Students 82% use Internet search engine most of the time Most of the time they can get what they need from the library, but . . .

Graduate Students Using the web is twice as easy & convenient as using online library resources Using online library resources is about as easy & convenient as turning to a human resource Small collection limits selection of research topics & quality of work - Professor, classmate, or librarian concern about local availability of old journals & out of print books

Barrier #1: Time Time is a limited resource Use what’s expedient Easy, speedy, convenient Prefer convenience of remote access to full text

Barrier #2: Discovery, Access & Use Library web sites & online resources are not easy to discover, access & use They take more time & are less convenient than Internet search engines So students & faculty often use Internet search engines

Academic Impact Lack of convenient, speedy, easy remote discovery & open access to quality, easy to use resources on the surface web is affecting the timeliness & success of research & learning

What’s Needed? Quality full text resources on the surface web Easy, speedy, convenient, remote discovery, open access, navigation & use

Response: Million Book Project Digitize & provide open access to a million books Vision, leadership, & research – Carnegie Mellon $$ Equipment & travel – NSF $$ Labor & research – India & China Other partners: OCLC & Internet Archive Following standards & laws Commitment to sustain

Academic Significance Convenient, speedy, easy, remote discovery, open access, navigation & use of quality full text resources on the surface web Project web site Links in library catalogs Links in WorldCat Eventually Google search Eventually OAI MHP Google searching of institutional repositories Undergraduates – path of least cognitive resistance Graduate students – include older books & journals

Social Significance Address disparity in library size & accessibility Democratize & facilitate new knowledge Support digital library research Preserve intellectual & cultural heritage Democratize knowledge & empower citizenry Combine old, new, east, west, technical & humanistic DL research areas: Information distribution, management, & sustainability Security, copyright, & digital rights management Accuracy of optical character recognition (OCR) OCR of non-Romanic languages & scripts Automatic creation of structural metadata Automatic summarization Intelligent indexing Machine translation Storage formats Search engines

“Attempt to understand & solve the technical, economic, & social policy issues of providing online access to all creative works of the human race.” Raj Reddy Michael Shamos Gloriana St. Clair

Collection of Collections What librarians select & partners want Books for College Libraries – Cultural artifacts Government documents – Technical reports What we can acquire – bulk, cheap, fast Requires 18% success rate with BCL publishers & 500 books each Most will be older, out of print materials

Metadata Librarians capture metadata Bibliographic: MARC or DC Administrative: copyright permission & source library OCLC digital registry Intent to preserve & make accessible in entirety Compliance with standards & best practices Professionally managed Public use copy available Registry of reproductions of books & journals digitized or queued for digitization Reduce duplication More access for less cost Registry signals Intent to preserve & make accessible in entirety Compliance with standards & best practices Professionally managed storage & maintenance Use copy available for public access One scanner, two shifts daily = 16 books per day 250 work days per year = Can do project in 5 years even with delays 600 DPI TIFF (v5) images ScanFix post-processing Abby Fine Reader OCR – English & some foreign Indians developing OCR – native languages & scripts

Digitization Operators scan & post process Above average wages 4000 books per year per scanner (two shifts per day) 400,000 books per year with 100 scanners Goal is 100 centers scanning 500,000 pages per day Registry of reproductions of books & journals digitized or queued for digitization Reduce duplication More access for less cost Registry signals Intent to preserve & make accessible in entirety Compliance with standards & best practices Professionally managed storage & maintenance Use copy available for public access One scanner, two shifts daily = 16 books per day 250 work days per year = Can do project in 5 years even with delays 600 DPI TIFF (v5) images ScanFix post-processing Abby Fine Reader OCR – English & some foreign Indians developing OCR – native languages & scripts

Issues & Next Steps Updating workflow & processing the backlog Coordinating acquisition & shipping Integrating & mirroring the collection Acquiring copyright permission Adding print on demand Improving the interface Dublin Core; digital registry; administrative metadata Negotiating with Amazon.com Funding; generating & approving lists of titles

Current book display & navigation Next & previous page Search within the book Zoom in & out Current book display & navigation Select format Go to page

Proposed book display & navigation Title of book New search for other books Next & previous page Go to page Return to results Select format Help Zoom in & out Beginning & end of book Location within book Proposed book display & navigation Add or remove bookmark Add to or view bookbag Get info about the book Search within the book

Million Book Project Web Sites China: http://www.ulib.org.cn/ India: http://www.dli.gov.in/home.htm U.S.: http://www.ulib.org/html/index.html FAQ: http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/MBP_FAQ.html Use Internet Explorer

Denise Troll Covey – troll@andrew.cmu.edu Thank you! Scanning center in Beijing Denise Troll Covey – troll@andrew.cmu.edu