Implementation of a faceted catalog search solution Kristin Antelman & Emily Lynema NCSU Libraries Feb. 7, 2006

Overview Purchase decision Implementation team Technical overview Features Interface decisions The future…

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

Implementation Team Andrew Pace, Systems, Chair Cindy Levine, Research and Information Services Emily Lynema, Systems, ex officio (tech lead) Erik Moore, Systems, ex officio (ILS librarian) Charley Pennell, Cataloging Shirley Rodgers, Systems Tito Sierra, Digital Library Initiatives

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.

Data Extraction First extract MARC data for import into Endeca.

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

Formatted Extract

Nightly Update Each night a script updates the data indexed by Endeca: –Exports updated or new MARC records from Unicorn. –Reformats and merges these records with those already indexed. –Starts Endeca re-index – completely rebuilding index for the catalog. Process requires about 7 hours.

Quick Demo

Interface Decisions Search interface pages Full view holdings display Order of dimensions

Search Interface Pages Problem: How to provide Endeca keyword searching and Web2 authority searching while keeping the search interface as close to the ‘one box’ approach as possible.

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

Option 1: Links within Search tab Right-hand links to 3 pages under Search tab too confusing

Option 2: Single drop-down Too many options in drop-down overwhelm user Keyword and authority searching lead to completely different interfaces

Option 3: Separate tab for authority searches Anybody know what Begins With… tab does?

Full-View Holdings Display Problem: Communicate whether a resource is available and where it is located in a usable fashion.

Pre-Endeca Results List Too many boxes, lines, and shaded areas. Elements for a single record not visually grouped.

First version of results page wireframe (~8 total iterations). Ideas drawn from Web2, RedLightGreen, Amazon, etc.

5 th Revision: Attempt to aggregate holdings information by call number. Particularly confusing for online resources. Brief view vs. Full view gives user choice about displaying holdings.

8 th (and Final) Revision: Aggregate holdings information by library. Reduces complexity of continuing and online resources.

Endeca Results List

Dimension Display Problem: With 10 dimensions to display on the results page, where should they appear (and in what order)? Goal: Give high visibility to dimensions that will be most valuable to users, but also highlight useful dimensions that may represent new concepts.

LCC and Availability dimensions – first draft

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

Future Plans Ongoing tweaks: –Relevance ranking algorithms & spell correction thresholds –Display fixes/enhancements –Additional browsing options Endeca 2.0 ideas –FRBR-ized display [more later] –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.

FRBR & Rollup Explore Endeca’s built-in rollup functionality. Need to create a single text key to ‘roll up’ individual records for different editions into a single work result. Looking at using author/title keys as outlined in the Library of Congress FRBR display tool algorithm.

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.

More questions?