MetaLib - Making E-resources Earn Their Keep Frank Parry USTLG, Edinburgh 17 June 2004

Loughborough – the facts! 13,500 students 2,800 staff serials – 4000 print, over 6000 electronic books – over 400,000 databases – over 200

E-resources earning their keep what e-resources? e-journals and databases monitor usage statistics & value for money promotion database of the month training sessions and now…MetaLib!

Portals JISC describes portals as: “a network service that brings together content from diverse distributed resources using technologies such as cross-searching, harvesting, and alerting, and collates this into an amalgamated form for presentation to the user.”

Commercial portals offer: grouping of databases simultaneous searching (through Z39.50, web scraping and xml) collation of results de-duplicating links to full text

Some commercial portals DigitaLink / iPac (Epixtech) ENCompass (Endeavour) Rooms (SIRSI) MetaLib (ExLibris) Millennium Access Plus (MAP) Portal (Innovative) TalisPrism (Talis) ZPORTAL (Fretwell-Downing)

OpenURL is a linking technology & a protocol for interoperability between services hotlinks from databases leads a user to appropriate full text resources

Portals and linking at Loughborough MetaLib portal of all our databases simultaneous searching of compliant databases SFX openURL links article records to library catalogue and/or e-journals

Implementation of MetaLib & SFX large team approach Systems, Support Services & Academic Librarians long time scale March – September smaller, separate team implemented SFX

Discussions look and feel branding contents (electronic & print) authentication (VLE username & password) Library’s web pages (which should exist) information skills

Cataloguing & configuring cataloguing easy form driven quality & content testing configuration not so easy who should configure? technical staff / academic librarians how many databases are cross searchable?

Pilot and “live” piloted with 3 Academic Departments focus groups Questionnaire positive feedback “live” in September 2002 smaller MetaLib group (four people) on average half a day per week

What has it meant for the Library? role of library staff very little change enquiries are often easier to answer training simpler Handout Online tutorial 56http://inhale.hud.ac.uk/perl/jump.pl? increased use of databases

Statistics increase in usage of databases 609%

Statistics by database usage up Zetoc 1385% SportDiscus 1207% ICEA 225% INSPEC 73% OCLC 79% ABES 36% IBSS 31% Beilstein 23% usage down Psycinfo-63% Lexis-Nexis-51% Mintel -36% RAPRA-31% UKOP -6% Art Abstracts-12% Compendex -4%

Top ten databases in 2003 JuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctober ArticleFirstZetocArticleFirst ZetocArticleFirstZetoc IBSS Ante OPACASSIA ABMIBSS Ante OPACASSIA OPAC AnteOPAC CompendexInspec ASSIAInspec Compendex InspecSportDiscus BHISportDiscusBHICeramic AbsMedline SportDiscusCompendexBioSci Comp & InfoEng MatMedline Compendex BioSciPolymer SportDiscusComp & Info

What does MetaLib mean to our readers? students less reliance on Google? cross searchable versus most appropriate? researchers & academics using MetaLib cross search more than anticipated

The future investigate: usage statistics for e-journals searching behaviour of readers incorporate new features of MetaLib e-journals

Thanks…. Parts of this presentation were originally created for a conference paper delivered by Ruth Stubbings