1. Multimedia in Discovery Services
Elizabeth Schneider Christine Stohn Elizabeth Peele Mumpower
User Relations Manager, Senior Product Manager Systems Librarian
Technical Services Lead for Discovery and Delivery

2. The Problem: Connecting Researchers with Multimedia
How do users search for multimedia in Discovery Services?
Typical scenario:
Hannah is a student in a class on European modernist artists. Her professor assigns the class a research paper on Marc Chagall. The topic of the paper is entirely up to them as long as it centers on Chagall, but the paper must include related images and even audio, if possible. How will she find this information?
For Hannah to do this from Emory’s site, she would need to go to Emory’s search page, discovere.com, search for Marc Chagall or Chagall in the Combined tab (this way she’ll be getting information from Primo Central and not just Emory’s own resources, narrow down by resource type based on what she was looking for, and then she could choose collections from there. The ArtStor Digital Library has a lot of images of his artwork as well as of the artist. Hannah would then have to determine how to use those images best in her paper.

3. Artstor Digital Library
Content
Artstor Digital Library

4. The Mechanics Artstor Ex Libris Server OAI Server Harvesting
XML Records
Dublin Core Metadata
Thumbnails
Links to media in Artstor Digital Library

5. Metadata Mapping Problematic Fields
Dublin Core not necessarily the optimal schema
Mapped differently in each system
Problematic Fields
Resource Type - Art? Image? Media?
Publisher - Artstor?
Many contributors to the Digital Library - Artstor is an aggregator

6. Search Algorithms and Results Ranking
Media Quality
Image resolution not included in metadata
How can we help users find the highest-quality media files?

7. Discovery Service
Ex Libris Primo

8. Artstor & Web-scale Discovery Systems
Primo Library/End-user Environment
How does it work?
Artstor OAI Server
Ex Libris Server
XML Records
Dublin Core Metadata
Thumbnails
Links to media in Artstor Digital Library
Harvesting
(Copying)
Mapping & Indexing
PNX
Normalization rules
Search
Display
FRBR
Facets …

9. Content Integration - Challenges
Large variety of metadata formats, types
Challenges with metadata inconsistencies and “sudden” changes
Multimedia content can get “drowned” in large result lists
Understanding user scenarios is key

10. Primo Central Backoffice – PNX viewer

11. Primo Central Backoffice – PNX to source record comparison

12. Primo Central Backoffice – Source record view

13. Primo Central Backoffice – PNX view

14. Helping users to find Multimedia content
One result list?
Featured result bar?
Separate search scope?

15. View in a featured result bar

16. View in an image result page

17. Looking to the future... More granular resource types?
Connecting user choices with user searches
Discovery between (course) resource lists and library discovery system
Searching vs. exploring – clustering multimedia content
Personalisation – pre-selection of preferred material types
Support for hierarchical digital collections

18. Digital collection discovery

19. Digital collection discovery

20. Library & End-Users
Emory University

21. Brief Snapshot Recently got SharedShelf up and publishing.
Don’t have collections piped into Primo Production, but have been working with test.
Also have collections in ArtStor.
Also have other multimedia collections, many of which are piped into Primo.
Looking at the best way to represent this content.

22. Institutional Multimedia Content: Making it Discoverable
Harvest:
Map from holder of multimedia content to library system
In-house digitization that still needs to be piped into discovery system
Normalize:
Understand user search patterns
Searching for resource or representation?
Access Permissions:
Can something only be available on campus, or only to signed in Institutional users?
Harvest: done through OAI or received from a service like Primo Central. Can be problems here (OAI). In the case of SharedShelf, we’re mapping from SharedShelf fields to Dublin Core, so trying to determine the best match requires agreement amongst library staff as to how that interaction should work. Not all OAIs are exactly alike, so some require extra work for the harvest to actually work with the discovery system such as having to customize an OAI file splitter.
Normalize: need to understand user search patterns for a particular collection so that we can best display the information. If users are searching for audio, but there is no way to easily (key point on the easily, SOHP story later on) narrow it down to just audio, the users become frustrated. If it is a collection from a museum, are people going to know specific titles (most likely not unless it’s famous pieces) or are they going to search by genre, format, type? Are we going to classify the actual resource, or the representation (example: if a finding aid has a lot of digitize photographs, do we allow searching for images or for archival materials? or if a sculpture in a museum has been photographed and added to the discovery layer index, will users search for “image” which is how the piece is represented in the discovery layer, or will they want to narrow down or search based on “sculpture” which is what the resource actually is. which one is a user more likely to use?
Support: Not all aspects of multimedia materials are usually supported by discovery layers. If your collection is particular old (such as 10000BC, will the discovery layer allow a date that old or will have to settle with simply not being able to search based on date for older collections) Need more work here

23. Difficulties with Making it Discoverable
Harvest:
Mapping from one type of metadata to another, SharedShelf to DC
Have to standardize
Have to tweak OAI or OAI splitters to work with piping the collection in.
Normalize:
Does the system necessarily support all the fields necessary for your type of data?
Access Permissions:
Granularity can often be necessary, especially when working with multimedia special collections.
Sustainability

24. Knowing Your Users
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for making multimedia content discoverable is knowing who your users are, and understanding how they are using the content.
Seasoned researchers versus undergrads
Search differently
Different needs
“Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for making multimedia content discoverable is knowing who your users are, and understanding how they are using the content.”
If you don’t know who your users are, then you don’t how to present your content. If your main body of users is undergraduates, then presenting content for them is different from presenting it to a group made of seasoned, topical researchers.
Understanding how they search is just important.
Who are the users of these platforms? (e.g. primarily undergrads?)
Depends on the collection, but often users coming to a discovery platform will be students, but a libraries’ collections can bring in all sorts of users. If a library is known for its oral history collections, then that could bring in a wide-array of researchers or even family members who want to hear an interview.
Are they looking for multimedia content?
Again, depends. Based solely on personal experience, users who find multimedia content are often looking for it for one reasons or another (personal interest, research paper)
A professor told a Freshman to find a piece of propaganda art that spoke to them and now they have to do a rhetorical analysis of that piece of art.
How are they finding multimedia content?
Often knowing what to search for, or at least what facets to use to narrow down the fields. If they’re searching for oral histories, they’ll know to narrow by audio or to search for specific terms. Even knowing what type of material you’re looking for it can still be difficult to find items and get to the exact one you want.
How are they using multimedia content?
Research, adding to papers, using the content for further research.

25. Understanding Your Users
How do your users search?
Do they use facets? Which ones?
Are they more interested in recall or precision?
Do they know your collections, or are they just discovering them?
As you can see by the image below, resource type is important, this means metadata for this needs to be accurate.
Primo Analytics, Emory University

26. End-User Issues Challenges: Knowing what to look for And how to look
Knowing where to look
Knowing how to use it
What challenges do users face with multimedia content in discovery platforms? (e.g. Are they even looking for multimedia content? Are they able to find multimedia content easily? Do they know how to use multimedia content in research? If your users are mainly undergrads, then they are more than likely used to searching for images on Google, whether for the latest meme or a look from the most recent Oscars. This type of search is different from searching a discovery layer.
Knowing what to look for: knowing how to search for the multimedia materials, best way to find the most relevant results
Knowing where to look: are the library’s multimedia holdings advertised, are students/researchers aware that the collections exist and that they have access to them.
Knowing how to use it: do the patrons (especially students) know how to properly use multimedia content in their work?

27. Training & Promotion
Does not matter if you have it if nobody knows about it or knows how to use it.
A library can have the best multimedia collection around, but if nobody knows about it, can discover it, or use it, then the resource does nothing to help the library or its patrons.
Market
Know your collections. Market them to relevant users.
Instruct
Make sure users know how to use your resources in their own research and instruction.

28. Discussion