New continent or Bermuda? The consolidation of e-resources in Hong Kong Shue Yan University Library. Mr. Joe Chow & Mr. Cyrus Fong 8th Annual HKIUG Meeting 4 Dec 2007

Agenda  Background  Challenges  Solution  Snapshots  Demo  Summary & Review

Background  Shue Yan develop the e-resource from 1999  The first two online databases are  China Infobank  Financial Times  2001 – ProQuest, CAJ  2003 – ebrary, LION  2004 – Ebscohost  2006 – LexisNexis

Resources in Shue Yan  Library Catalogue  INNOPAC  Over 32,000 E-Book titles  ebrary, GVRL …  Over 28,000 full-text E-Journal titles  CAJ, Ebscohost, ProQuest, Lexis-Nexis …  Other Internet resources

Old Style Access DB Client Server Many Search Interfaces Server

Challenges  Many searching performs  Users have difficulty identifying appropriate databases  Information literary level of users  Users often don ’ t distinguish between the library website and library resources

Many Searching Platforms

New continent or Bermuda?  Library: Waste the precious resource in the University  Users: Waste the time  New continent or Bermuda for the users?

 How about integrated all of them in a single platform? Benefit:  Fast, easy to use  Integrated results  Provides a successful experience Solution

Federated Search - 1 DB Client Server One Web-based Search Interface

Federated Search - 2  Federated search is “ the simultaneous search of multiple online databases and is an emerging feature of automated, Web-based library and information retrieval systems. ” - Wikipedia.org

Consideration in Shue Yan Implementation Cost Maintenance Functions User Education Resources Integration

Open Source  Cost consideration  Support by the developer and community  Flexible for customization

Functional Requirement  Authentication  Result merging  De-duplication  Relevance ranking

Technical Requirement  Support major e-resources in the Library  ProQuest  Ebrary  Ebscohost  Integration with Library Home page  Support OpenURL, Z39.50, Web  We have adopted the project in Canada

Implementation  Prepare the hardware  Start the service with 3 simple steps  Download a CDROM ISO file  Burn a CDROM  Boot-up with the CDROM  The software supports major databases in our e-resources, like ProQuest, ebrary, Ebscohost etc …

Server Configuration  OS : Linux Ubuntu  CPU : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 1.86GHz  Memory : 2GB  Apache :  MySQL :  Perl : 5.8.7

Snapshot - 1 Simple Search Screen

Snapshot - 2 Advanced Search Screen

Snapshot - 3 Search Result

Demo Search Result

Summary & Experiences  Chinese does not support  Emerald does not support  Developed the parser and contribute to the community  XML does not support

Dilemma  Other products in the market  No free lunch in the world  Not the best solution but a suitable solution

Future  Enhance user interface  Further integrate with library catalogue and online databases  Try to develop parser add Chinese databases

Thank you!