Catalogs for the Future Andrew K. Pace NCSU Libraries March 24, 2006 Library Automation: Yesterday’s Technology Tomorrow ILS Vendors: Squandering our money doing exactly what we asked them to do

The state of catalogs One rarely gets what one deserves. One almost never gets what ones does not ask for.

“OPAC Complainers” “There is certainly no dearth of OPAC complainers. You have Andrew Pace (OPACs suck), and Roy Tennant (You Can’t Put Lipstick on a Pig) writing and presenting about the need for change (more simplicity) in the OPAC world. I can appreciate their arguments for a simpler OPAC (not to mention the rest of the system) but other then present their arguments, neither has much in the way of suggestions nor have they sparked a movement among librarians or the automation vendors to do anything about the situation. -ACRL Blog entry, 13-Oct-2005 March 2005 “Lipstick on a Pig,” Digital Libraries Column, LJ April 15, 2005

NextGen OPAC The Next Generation OPAC is more than just a facelift –RLG, OCLC Fictiofinder –Vivisimo clustered search (demo)demo –Aquabrowser visual context (demo)demo –Endeca faceted search (demo)demo –Innovative Interfaces “OPAC Pro” –Ex Libris “Primo” –Polaris, AJAX-Enabled OPAC –SirsiDynix Enterprise Portal System, FAST –Talis, et al  Web Services –OCLC Custom Worldcat –Georgia Pines and the Library 2.0 Bandwagon

Pursuit of Features Endeca, et al Speed Relevance Ranking Faceted Browsing True Browsing (LC) Spell-checking Automatic stemming “Did you mean…” Unicorn / Web2 As if… Last-in / First-out Authority index links Query required Dictionary lookup only No

Purchase Decision Lots of broad topical keyword searches Authority infrastructure underutilized No relevancy ranking of results Opportunity to partner with Endeca

Technical Overview Endeca ProFind co-exists with SirsiDynix Unicorn ILS and Web2 online catalog. Endeca indexes MARC records exported from Unicorn. Index is refreshed nightly with records added/updated during previous day.

Endeca ProFind Overview Endeca’s ProFind software is responsible for… –Ingesting and indexing reformatted NCSU data. –Creating a back-end service that responds to queries with result sets. NCSU is responsible for… –Reformatting MARC records into something Endeca application can parse. –Keeping these reformatted records up to date. –Building the web application that users see. –Sending queries to Endeca back-end service and displaying results.

Did someone say “MARC is dead” ? Endeca doesn’t understand MARC records. MARC  flat text file(s) for ingest by Endeca. Creates opportunity to manipulate data on the back-end.

Pre-Endeca Catalog Search 6 search tabs 14 radio buttons 1-4 drop down boxes

Endeca Catalog Search 3 search tabs No radio buttons 2 search boxes Keyword search default

8 th (and Final) Revision: Ideas drawn from Web2, RedLightGreen, Amazon, etc. Aggregate holdings information by library. Reduces complexity of continuing and online resources. Brief view vs. Full view gives user choice about displaying holdings.

10. Library of Congress Classification 9. Availability 1.Subject: Topic 2.Subject: Genre 3.Format 4.Library 5.Subject: Region 6.Subject: Era 7.Language 8.Author

Challenges Using LCSH like it’s never been used before Using LC Classification for collection browsing Integration with Web2 and authority searching Creeping Featuritis Uncharted territory

Single aggregate record represents 73 actual records — different editions of Iliad with Homer as author Users performs keyword search for ‘iliad’

Click on ‘See all editions’ to view individual publication and holdings information for each aggregated result.

Some User Reaction “This is absolutely the coolest thing I've seen all century.” -Will Owen, Head of Systems (UNC Libraries) “Also, I'm really digging the new NCSU library catalog. Very nice." - Educause staff (non-librarian) “The new Endeca system is incredible. It would be difficult to exaggerate how much better it is than our old online card catalog (and therefore that of most other universities). I've found myself searching the catalog just for fun, whereas before it was a chore to find what I needed.” - NCSU Undergrad, Statistics

Usability Testing & Stats 141,987 searches Feb 26- Mar 14

Future Plans Ongoing tweaks: –Continued usability testing –Relevance ranking algorithms & spell correction thresholds –Display fixes/enhancements –Additional browsing options Endeca 2.0 ideas –FRBR-ized display –Discussions with OCLC regarding FAST (Faceted Access to Subject Terms) –Patron-generated refinements –Build detail page in Endeca with live item data from Oracle –Shopping cart functionality for /export of records –Enrich records with supplemental content – more usable TOCs, book reviews, etc. –The death of authority searching (?)

Catalog A&I / FT DBs Serials Web Catalog is only the first step…

Digital Repositories ERM System Faceted Search Legacy ILS Clustered Metasearch IR GS

Thanks Andrew Pace, Head, IT Emily Lynema, Lead Developer