October 2007Internet Librarian International The Impact of 2.0 lipstick, cowbells and serendipity in the OPAC Dave Pattern, Library Systems Manager University of Huddersfield

October 2007Internet Librarian International Contents “OPAC suckitude” Some findings from the OPAC Survey Our experiences at Huddersfield More from the OPAC Survey Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License

October 2007Internet Librarian International Does Your OPAC “Suck”?

October 2007Internet Librarian International 20074

October 2007Internet Librarian International 20075

October 2007Internet Librarian International Quick OPAC Survey (2007) On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is extremely unhappy and 10 is extremely happy), how happy are you with your OPAC? 5.1 

October 2007Internet Librarian International Quick OPAC Survey (2007) One criticism of OPACs is that they rarely have cutting edge features (or perhaps even basic features) that our users expect from a modern web site. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you think your OPAC meets the needs and expectations of your users? 4.5

October 2007Internet Librarian International Quick OPAC Survey (2007) On a scale of 1 to 10, how easy do you think one of your average users finds your OPAC is to use? 4.6 On a scale of 1 to 10, how important do you think it is that an OPAC is easy & intuitive to use? 9.2

October 2007Internet Librarian International The Huddersfield Experience Not really “OPAC 2.0” (?) Enhancements to the vendor OPAC –user suggestions from student/staff surveys –“2.0” inspired features –good ideas “borrowed” from other web sites –new features launched with no/low publicity –“perpetual beta” Required staff buy-in and a willingness to experiment and take risks

October 2007Internet Librarian International Spell Checker We monitored keyword searches over a six month period and discovered 23%* of searches gave zero results –most OPACs present the user with a dead end page (“...where do I go now?”) –a good search engine should still give the user options on a failed search (“did you mean?”) (* 2 years on, it’s still around 20%)

October 2007Internet Librarian International Spell Checker

October 2007Internet Librarian International Spell Checker Spell checker based on a common word dictionary or your own holdings? –...the latter might highlight your cataloguing errors 1 !cataloguing errors

October 2007Internet Librarian International Serendipity Keyword Suggestions failed keyword searches are cross referenced with to provide new search suggestions

October 2007Internet Librarian International Serendipity Keyword Suggestions

October 2007Internet Librarian International Borrowing Suggestions We had details of over 2,000,000 CKOs spanning 10 years stored in the library management system and gathering virtual dust Web 2.0 – “Data is the Next Intel Inside 1 ”Data is the Next Intel Inside Historic circulation data can be mined 2 to uncover the hidden trends and links between potentially disparate library itemsmined

October 2007Internet Librarian International Borrowing Suggestions

October 2007Internet Librarian International Other Editions Uses FRBR-y web services provided by OCLC and LibraryThing to locate other editions and related works within local holdings –OCLC’s xISBN 1xISBN –LibraryThing’s thingISBN 2thingISBN

October 2007Internet Librarian International Other Editions

October 2007Internet Librarian International Ratings and Comments

October 2007Internet Librarian International

October 2007Internet Librarian International

October 2007Internet Librarian International

October 2007Internet Librarian International

October 2007Internet Librarian International

October 2007Internet Librarian International

October 2007Internet Librarian International Problems... Challenges! There was no formal process for discussing & agreeing new OPAC features –so we organised a web/library 2.0 afternoon for staff Some initial (healthy) scepticism from staff –would users think borrowing suggestions were formal recommendations from the library? –aren’t borrowing suggestions just for selling books? –how relevant will the suggestions be? Would sudden changes confuse users?

October 2007Internet Librarian International Solutions? Encourage suggestions from staff Include users in decision making process Encourage play and experimentation Don’t be afraid to make mistakes! Look widely for ideas “Build crappy prototypes fast” 1 Monitor usage –if usage is poor then remove it

October 2007Internet Librarian International “If you build it, will they come?”

October 2007Internet Librarian International Increase in Usage

October 2007Internet Librarian International Increase in Usage

October 2007Internet Librarian International Lipstick on the Pig “We need to focus more energy on important, systemic changes rather than cosmetic ones. If your system is more difficult to search and less effective than Amazon.com, then you have work to do. After all, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still very much a pig.” (Roy Tennant, Library Journal, 2005)Library Journal

October 2007Internet Librarian International Quick OPAC Survey – Features Please rate how important you feel the following features are to your users in a modern OPAC. –embedding the OPAC in external sites (e.g. portals)8.7 –“did you mean” spelling suggestions8.6 –enriched content (book covers, ToCs, etc)8.4 –RSS feeds (e.g. new books, searches, etc)7.8 –facetted browsing (e.g. like NCSU Library)7.4 –“people who borrowed this” suggestions6.5 –user tagging of items (i.e. folksonomy)6.1 –user added comments and reviews6.1 –personalised suggestions (e.g. like Amazon)6.0 –user added ratings for items5.7

October 2007Internet Librarian International Importance (getting soon)

October 2007Internet Librarian International Importance – UK respondents

October 2007Internet Librarian International Technology Adoption - Now

October 2007Internet Librarian International Technology Adoption – Q4 07?

October 2007Internet Librarian International Thank you! Any quick questions?