A Faceted Interface to the Library Catalog Tito Sierra NCSU Libraries ALA Midwinter Meeting January 20, 2007

Outline Motivation Demo Key Features Faceted Navigation Facet Usage Statistics Implementation Challenges Reflections

Motivation Improve the library catalog user experience Exploit existing authority infrastructure (make MARC data work harder!)

Endeca at NCSU Endeca used to improve the discovery portion of the library catalog Endeca software indexes 1.6 million MARC records exported nightly from Sirsi Unicorn ILS Backend functions of ILS remain intact

What is Endeca? Software company based in Cambridge, MA Search and information access technology provider for several major e-commerce websites Developers of the Endeca Information Access Platform

Why Endeca? Configurable relevance ranking Improved response time Better search features Better subject access by turning metadata into facets

Demo

Key Features Relevance ranking Search comforts True browse Faceted navigation

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

Search Comforts “Did you mean…” suggestions Automatic spell correction Stemming Sort options

True Browse Browse by Library of Congress Classification without entering search terms

Faceted Navigation What is it? Why do it?

What is Faceted Navigation?

Search and browse in a single interface Facets can vary in scope What is the item about? What kind of item is it? Where is it? Enables users to narrow results

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

Faceted Navigation on the Web

Faceted Navigation in Libraries

Facets Implemented at NCSU Availability Author Library Format Language Browse: New LC Classification Subject: Topic Subject: Genre Subject: Region Subject: Era

Facet Usage Statistics July - November 2006

Facet Usage Statistics July - November 2006

Facet Usage Statistics July - November 2006

Implementation Challenges Facet selection Interface design Data issues

Facet Selection

Interface Design Iterative approach using wireframes Eight major revisions in a four month period Still lots of room for improvement

Interface Design Iterative approach using wireframes Eight major revisions in a four month period Still lots of room for improvement

Interface Design Iterative approach using wireframes Eight major revisions in a four month period Still lots of room for improvement

Data Issues ILS data with MARC-8 encoding => Text data with UTF-8 encoding Data consistency between ILS and Endeca catalog indexes (updates!) Data issues revealed by exposing metadata (ex: subject headings) in facets

Reflections Faceted navigation enables new ways to discovery resources Library collections often contain rich descriptive metadata… exploit this! We have much to learn about how to optimize these interfaces for the user

More Information NCSU Endeca Project Site: ITAL Article: Antelman, K., Lynema, E., & Pace, A. (2006). "Toward a 21st Century Library Catalog," Information Technology and Libraries, 25(3).

Thanks! Tito Sierra Asst. Head of Digital Library Development NCSU Libraries