1. The Million Book Project: Removing Obstacles to Use, Satisfaction, & Success
Denise Troll Covey
Principal Librarian for Special Projects – Carnegie Mellon
LIDA 2004 – Dubrovnik, Croatia

2. Overview Library users & use in the digital age
Results of national & international surveys
Results of research
Barriers to use, satisfaction, & success
Million Book Project response

3. What Academic Users Want
Personal control & ubiquitous access to comprehensive information
90% want convenient, speedy, easy access
Only thing they want more is quality information
61% prefer remote access to full text
Express unmet need for electronic resources twice as often as for print resources
31% don’t want to go to the physical library

4. What Academic Libraries Provide
Need for personal control & convenient, speedy, easy access to information
Service provided by the library
24% often can’t get information when needed
50% to 90%
students & faculty
perceive a gap
between
Association of Research Libraries LibQual+ Survey 2002 & 2003
35% failure rate accomplishing tasks on web sites
LibQual+ Survey
2002 & 2003

5. Priority Problems Enough time
Knowing what library resources are available
Accessing & using online library resources
Difficulty navigating & searching library web sites
Issues with the design, functionality, & access restrictions of licensed online library resources
Problems with proxy servers & VPN
Jakob Nielsen
35% failure rate accomplishing tasks on web sites

6. What Academic Users Are Doing
Students & faculty trust library more than Internet
35% use library less now than two years ago
86% library meets most of their information needs
80% Internet has changed their use of the library
73% of students use the Internet more than the library
Trust library more than the Internet, but
students & faculty

7. Students & Faculty
Use Internet search engines because they are easier, faster, & more convenient than using a library or other web site
48% start with Internet search engine (54% ugrads)
33% start with library web site (28% ugrads)
33% do not get most of the information they need from their physical or digital library
54% access library resources remotely (68% ugrads)
Trust library more than the Internet, but
students & faculty

8. Information Seeking in the Library
% of information
seeking time spent
in physical library
Trust library more than the Internet, but
students & faculty

9. Undergraduate Student Behaviors
48% use online resources all or most of the time
80% use the library fewer than 3 hours per week
40% use Internet for every assignment
11% use library web site for every assignment
Efficiency is more important than relevance
11% are not concerned about authoritativeness
Ease & speed of finding information can be as important in satisfying the user as the utility or appropriateness of the information found

10. Undergraduate Student Behaviors
69% live off campus
59% use home computer > school computers
90% access the web from their home computer
80% use the library for web access, but only 20% prefer this access point
80% prefer remote access

11. Undergraduate Student Beliefs
96% information found on the surface web is adequate for class assignments
11% don’t care about the authority of information
46% other web sites have better information than the library web site
11% are not concerned about authoritativeness
Ease & speed of finding information can be as important in satisfying the user as the utility or appropriateness of the information found

12. What Users Want Personal control & access to information
Remote access to full text
More & easier to use online resources
Way to identify appropriate resources & to get updates on available resources
More books, including out of print books
More back issues of journals
Customizable user interface
More comfortable library facilities
Ease
Speed
Convenience

13. Provide Small collection Web site & portal VPN & Shibboleth
Automated Resource Finder & SFX
Online reserves, reference, renewal, holds, ILL, direct borrowing from other libraries
Self check out
1,000,000 printed books
185 databases
18,000 electronic books
13,000 electronic journals
Library portal
Facilitate easy, convenient access to key services
Push relevant information to the appropriate people
Provide customizable interface
Institutional repository

14. Priority Problems Enough time Personal control & access to information
Barely meeting needs of graduate students
Not meeting desires of undergraduate students
Problems accessing & using online library resources
Library catalog & databases are not easy to use
Difficulty navigating the library web site
Difficulty picking appropriate resources & keeping up to date
Physical library & ILL are inconvenient
Web site information is less useful for undergraduates
78% use web site weekly
We are barely meeting minimal service levels for graduate students
Service adequacy gap
We are not meeting the desires & expectations of undergraduate students
Service superiority gap
Most in need of improvement – personal control

15. What Users Are Doing Database searches Catalog searches
Full text retrieval
Circulation

16. What Users Are Doing Virtual visits Printing Physical visits
Photocopying

17. What Users Are Doing
Reserves
Reference
Digital
Traditional

18. Graduate Students Most important factors in determining search tool
93% Quality of info – 46% Speed
67% Convenience – 41% Ease of use
Seeking & obtaining information
1st Internet search engine
2nd Library web site
3rd Human resource
4th Physical library
Using the web is twice as easy & convenient as using online library resources
Using library e-resources is about as easy & convenient as turning to a human resource - Professor, classmate, or librarian
Half use ILL; half of users think it’s inconvenient
Using the physical library is not easy & convenient
70% from web – 27% from library resource
Low service adequacy from LibQual+ & impact of journal cancellations & changed access privileges to e-resources at neighboring university
Concerned about level of service
Like faculty, need access to journals, but lack financial resources & professional network
Like undergraduates, often have short deadlines; interlibrary loan is slow

19. Graduate Students 82% use Internet search engine most of the time
Most of the time they can get what they need from the library, but . . .

20. Graduate Students
Using the web is twice as easy & convenient as using online library resources
Using online library resources is about as easy & convenient as turning to a human resource
Small collection limits selection of research topics & quality of work
- Professor, classmate, or librarian
concern about local availability of old journals & out of print books

21. Barrier #1: Time Time is a limited resource Use what’s expedient
Easy, speedy, convenient
Prefer convenience of remote access to full text

22. Barrier #2: Discovery, Access & Use
Library web sites & online resources are not easy to discover, access & use
They take more time & are less convenient than Internet search engines
So students & faculty often use Internet search engines

23. Academic Impact
Lack of convenient, speedy, easy remote discovery & open access to quality, easy to use resources on the surface web is affecting the timeliness & success of research & learning

24. What’s Needed? Quality full text resources on the surface web
Easy, speedy, convenient, remote discovery, open access, navigation & use

25. Response: Million Book Project
Digitize & provide open access to a million books
Vision, leadership, & research – Carnegie Mellon
$$ Equipment & travel – NSF
$$ Labor & research – India & China
Other partners: OCLC & Internet Archive
Following standards & laws
Commitment to sustain

26. Academic Significance
Convenient, speedy, easy, remote discovery, open access, navigation & use of quality full text resources on the surface web
Project web site
Links in library catalogs
Links in WorldCat
Eventually Google search
Eventually OAI MHP
Google searching
of institutional repositories
Undergraduates – path of least cognitive resistance
Graduate students – include older books & journals

27. Social Significance Address disparity in library size & accessibility
Democratize & facilitate new knowledge
Support digital library research
Preserve intellectual & cultural heritage
Democratize knowledge & empower citizenry
Combine old, new, east, west, technical & humanistic
DL research areas:
Information distribution, management, & sustainability
Security, copyright, & digital rights management
Accuracy of optical character recognition (OCR)
OCR of non-Romanic languages & scripts
Automatic creation of structural metadata
Automatic summarization
Intelligent indexing
Machine translation
Storage formats
Search engines

28. “Attempt to understand & solve
the technical, economic, & social policy
issues of providing online access
to all creative works of the human race.”
Raj Reddy
Michael Shamos
Gloriana St. Clair

29. Collection of Collections
What librarians select & partners want
Books for College Libraries – Cultural artifacts
Government documents – Technical reports
What we can acquire – bulk, cheap, fast
Requires 18% success rate with BCL publishers & 500 books each
Most will be older,
out of print materials

30. Metadata Librarians capture metadata Bibliographic: MARC or DC
Administrative: copyright permission & source library
OCLC digital registry
Intent to preserve & make accessible in entirety
Compliance with standards & best practices
Professionally managed
Public use copy available
Registry of reproductions of books & journals digitized or queued for digitization
Reduce duplication
More access for less cost
Registry signals
Intent to preserve & make accessible in entirety
Compliance with standards & best practices
Professionally managed storage & maintenance
Use copy available for public access
One scanner, two shifts daily = 16 books per day
250 work days per year = Can do project in 5 years even with delays
600 DPI TIFF (v5) images
ScanFix post-processing
Abby Fine Reader OCR – English & some foreign
Indians developing OCR – native languages & scripts

31. Digitization Operators scan & post process
Above average wages
4000 books per year per scanner (two shifts per day)
400,000 books per year with 100 scanners
Goal is 100 centers scanning 500, pages per day
Registry of reproductions of books & journals digitized or queued for digitization
Reduce duplication
More access for less cost
Registry signals
Intent to preserve & make accessible in entirety
Compliance with standards & best practices
Professionally managed storage & maintenance
Use copy available for public access
One scanner, two shifts daily = 16 books per day
250 work days per year = Can do project in 5 years even with delays
600 DPI TIFF (v5) images
ScanFix post-processing
Abby Fine Reader OCR – English & some foreign
Indians developing OCR – native languages & scripts

32. Issues & Next Steps Updating workflow & processing the backlog
Coordinating acquisition & shipping
Integrating & mirroring the collection
Acquiring copyright permission
Adding print on demand
Improving the interface
Dublin Core; digital registry; administrative metadata
Negotiating with Amazon.com
Funding; generating & approving lists of titles

33. Current book display & navigation
Next & previous
page
Search within the book
Zoom
in & out
Current book display & navigation
Select
format
Go to page

34. Proposed book display & navigation Title of book
New search for other books
Next & previous page
Go to page
Return to
results
Select
format
Help
Zoom
in & out
Beginning
& end of book
Location within book
Proposed
book display
& navigation
Add or
remove
bookmark
Add to
or view
bookbag
Get info about
the book
Search within
the book

35. Million Book Project Web Sites
China:
India:
U.S.:
FAQ:
Use Internet Explorer

36. Denise Troll Covey – troll@andrew.cmu.edu
Thank you!
Scanning center in Beijing
Denise Troll Covey –