12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#1 Making the catalogue a good place to be lipstick, cowbells and serendipity Dave Pattern, Library Systems Manager University of Huddersfield

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#2 Contents does your OPAC suck? OPAC survey findings experiences at Huddersfield other libraries OPAC 2.0 further OPAC survey findings Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#3 Does Your OPAC “Suck”?

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12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#7 “More Cowbell” …huh? “Used to express that something is deeply lacking oomph... to express that something is far from perfect, needs repair, fixing, rectifying.” (everything2.com)everything2.com

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12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#10 The OPAC as a Pig “After all, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still very much a pig.” (Roy Tennant discussing the OPAC, Library Journal, 2005)Library Journal “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” (attrib. Robert Heinlein, author)

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#11 Pig Ugly?

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#12 “Kissy, Kissy?”

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#13 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 

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#14 OPAC Survey (2007) One criticism of OPACs is that they rarely have cutting edge 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

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#15 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

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#16 Experiences at Huddersfield definitely not OPAC 2.0 enhancements to the existing OPAC –user suggestions from surveys –“2.0” inspired features –borrowing good ideas 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

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#17 Spell Checker we monitored keyword searches over a six month period and discovered approx 23% of searches gave zero results –most OPACs present the user with a “dead end” page –a good search engine should still give the user options on a failed search (“did you mean?”)

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#18 Spell Checker

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#19 Keyword Suggestions failed keyword searches are cross referenced with to provide new search suggestions

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#20 Keyword Suggestions

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#21 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

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#22 Borrowing Suggestions

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#23 Ratings and Comments

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#24 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

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#25 Other Editions

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#26 Alerts

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#27 RSS feeds

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12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#33 “If you build it, will they come?”

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#34 Increase in Usage

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#35 Increase in Usage

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#36 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

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#37 Problems...Challenges! there was no formal process for discussing and agreeing new OPAC features –so we organised a web/library 2.0 afternoon for staff some initial 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?

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#38 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” monitor usage –if usage is poor then remove it

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#39 Playing and experimenting

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#40 Searching for books by colour

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#41 Search visualisations

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#42 Search visualisations

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#43 CKO visualisations

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#44 New! Keyword cloud (prototype)

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#45 New! Keyword cloud (live OPAC)

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#46 Other Libraries Ann Arbor District Library North Carolina State University (Endeca) LibraryThing for Libraries Open Source OPACs

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#47 Ann Arbor District Library early adopter of “2.0” (John Blyberg) OPAC deeply embedded in Library portal virtual catalogue cards (with graffiti!) user tagging, ratings, and reviews borrowing suggestions RSS feeds

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12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#50 North Carolina State University facetted browsing

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12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#52 LibraryThing for Libraries integrates LibraryThing data into the OPAC –tags –borrowing suggestions –other editions

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12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#55 Open Source OPACs Scriblio (formerly WPOpac)Scriblio –uses WordPress (blogging software) VuFind –uses PHP & MySQL Lucene & SolrLuceneSolr –Project Backlight (Univ. of Virginia)Project Backlight –FacBackOPACFacBackOPAC –Huddersfield (blog post)Huddersfieldblog post

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12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#57 The Traditional Vendors Talis Platform –“an environment for building next generation applications and services” Ex Libris Primo –“one-stop solution for the discovery and delivery of local and remote resources” Innovative Interfaces Encore –“goes beyond the online-catalog model to provide a better patron experience ”

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#58 OPAC 2.0 “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” (Alan Kay, computer scientist and former Xerox PARC researcher) “The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.” (William Gibson, science fiction author and creator of the word “cyberspace”)

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#59 OPAC 2.0 shopping list of features: –spell checking (“did you mean?”) –relevancy ranking, search refining, and facets –manual recommendations (“best bets”) –automated suggestions (based on both global and user-specific data) –user participation (“read-write OPAC”) –foster communities of interest

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#60 OPAC 2.0 shopping list of features: –improve serendipity –expose hidden links between items –APIs and Web Services to expose data –promote unintended uses –user personalisation –embed external data (e.g. Wikipedia, LibraryThing) –RSS feeds and OpenSearch

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#61 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 reviews6.0 –personalised suggestions (e.g. like Amazon)5.9 –user added ratings for items5.7

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#62 Implementation of Features

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#63 Features – Future Trends?

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#64 Importance (getting soon)

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#65 Technology Adoption Lifecycle

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#66 Technology Adoption - Now

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#67 Technology Adoption – Q1 08?

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#68 Importance – UK respondents

12/Dec/2007PROWE Project Event#69 Thank you!