Opening the Door: using Endeca for a faceted catalog Emily Lynema NCSU Libraries MLC: Discovery & Access March 2, 2007

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond The Context

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond What is faceted navigation?

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Why faceted navigation?  Information Foraging (Pirolli and Card) People seek maximum benefit for minimal effort when searching for information People look for clues to determine if they are on the right path  Faceted results provide clues  Help users help themselves

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond A question  “How is the new generation of library catalog being developed?” informed and enhanced by search technologies developed outside of the library based on how our users know how to search, not on how we want them to search  What does search look like for our users?

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Existing OPACs are hard to use  Lots of topical searches and poor subject access keyword gives too many or too few results – leads to general distrust among users authority searching is under-utilized and misunderstood  Relevance = system sort order  Unforgiving on spelling errors, stemming  Response time doesn’t meet expectations of web-savvy users

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Valuable metadata is buried  Subject headings are not leveraged in keyword searching they should be browsed or linked from, not searched  Data from the item record is not leveraged should be able to easily filter based on user’s changing requirements using item type, location, circulation status, popularity

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond What’s the big picture?  Improve the quality of the library catalog user experience.  Exploit our existing metadata infrastructure (make MARC work harder).  Build a more flexible catalog tool that can be integrated with discovery tools of the future.

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Local Implementation: Endeca

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond What is Endeca?  Software company based in Cambridge, MA  Search and information access technology provider for a number of major e- commerce websites  Developers of the Endeca Information Access Platform

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Why Endeca?  Customized relevance ranking of results  Better subject access by leveraging available metadata through facets  Improved response time  Enhanced natural language searching through spell correction, etc.  Browse

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Demo

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Relevance ranking  Based on a locally managed and customizable algorithm  Factors Query as entered most relevant Field match weighting (title > notes field) Number of fields matched  Lots of other levers and dials to tweak

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Faceted navigation 1. Availability 2. LC Classification 3. Subject: Topic 4. Subject: Genre 5. Format 11. Browse tab: New 6. Library 7. Subject: Region 8. Subject: Era 9. Language 10. Author

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond True browse  Regain ability to browse catalog without entering any search terms

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Added search tools  Automatic spell correction  “Did you mean…” suggestions  Automatic stemming  Bookmark-ability

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond The nitty gritty  Endeca co-exists with SirsiDynix Unicorn ILS and Web2 online catalog Endeca handles keyword search Web2 handles authority search and detail page display  Endeca indexes MARC records exported nightly from Unicorn  Endeca = discovery portion of the ILS

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Outcomes

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Usage statistics

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Usage statistics

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Usage statistics

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Usage statistics DimensionValueRequests NewNEW56,286 FormatBook16,188 LC ClassificationQ - Science12,462 LibraryTextiles11,160 LibraryD.H. Hill11,060 AvailabilityAvailable9,276 LibraryOnline Resources8,164 LC ClassificationT – Technology8,052 Subject: TopicHistory7,915 FormatOnline7,858 LC ClassificationP - Language and literature7,005 LC ClassificationH - Social Sciences6,953 LanguageEnglish6,854 Subject: RegionUnited States6,298 FormatJournal, Magazine, or Serial4,621

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Usability testing  10 undergraduate students 5 with new Endeca-based interface 5 with old catalog interface Identical searching tasks  Data collected Task difficulty/failure Task duration

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Usability testing

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Usability testing

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Usability testing  For students, relevance ranking is key. July 06 – Jan 07: ~19% continued to page 2  Faceted navigation is intuitive, even for students who don’t use it.  Beware of library jargon “keyword anywhere”, “keyword in subject”  User behavior is influenced by previous experience.

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Opening Doors

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Freedom to build  Don’t underestimate the power to build…  ‘CatalogWS’ -> web services RSS QuickSearch integration Mobile phone search interface And more…

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond RSS

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond RSS

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond OpenSearch  Auto-discovery from HTML catalog search page.  Like a browser plugin, but easier to get.

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond QuickSearch

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond More open doors  Within our institution Enrich results with external data Experiment with a work display model Bring additional digital collections into the catalog’s search interface

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond More open doors  Outside our institution Momentum for change Ngc4lib Primo and other offerings from vendors Solr from the open source community

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond So what? It’s still just a catalog 1.Dismantle the old 2.Rebuild / exchange individual parts 3.Rebuild into something new 4.Repeat as necessary

MLC: The Library Rebooted Discovery and Access: the OPAC and Beyond Thanks  NCSU project site (including slides):  Emily Lynema Systems Librarian for Digital Projects