2009 Annual ASERL Membership Meeting Marshall Breeding Director for Innovative Technology and Research Vanderbilt University Library

 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, e- journal collections ◦ OpenURL linking services ◦ E-journal finding aids (Often managed by link resolver) ◦ Local digital collections  ETDs, photos, rich media collections ◦ Metasearch engines  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

Search: Digital Collections ProQuest EBSCOhost … MLA Bibliography ABC-CLIO Search Results Real-time query and responses ILS Data

Search: Digital Collections ProQuest EBSCOhost … MLA Bibliography ABC-CLIO Search Results Real-time query and responses ILS Data Local Index MetaSearch Engine

Search: Digital Collections ProQuest EBSCOhost … MLA Bibliography ABC-CLIO Search Results Pre-built harvesting and indexing Consolidated Index ILS Data

 Pre-populated indexes  Web-scale ◦ Exploits the full depth and breadth of library collections ◦ Beyond the bounds of the local library’s 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  Or at least major portions  Google aims to address all the world’s information  Not quite comprehensive – partial harvesting of any given resource  Discovery Layer Products for libraries aim to address all content collected by libraries:  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 ◦ Will be an important feature of projects such as HathiTrust  Deep search highly improved by high-quality metadata

 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