1. The future of the catalogue Warwick Cathro Assistant Director- General, Innovation

2. Under-used catalogues? “1% of Americans (2% of college students) start an electronic information search at a library web site” Perceptions of libraries and information resources (OCLC, 2005). Appendix A “Today, a large and growing number of students and scholars routinely bypass library catalogs in favor of other discovery tools” “The catalog is in decline, its processes and structures are unsustainable, and change needs to be swift” The changing nature of the catalog and its integration with other discovery tools (Karen Calhoun for the Library of Congress, 2006)

3. Under-used collections? “Very frequently, very large proportions of the collection do not ever circulate. A University of Pittsburgh study … indicated that 39.8% of all the books that the university library had bought were never used during the first six years in the library”. Charles D. Bernholz, Weeding the Reference Collection: A Review of the Literature “This article reports on an evaluation of recent monograph selections in a small academic health sciences library. Actual use of each new book was determined from date-due slips. The startling result was that more than 60% of recent selections had been used little or not at all”. Ruth E. Fenske Evaluation of monograph selection in a health sciences library

5. The long tail “Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want.... People are going deep into the catalog … and the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought” - Chris Anderson. The long tail. Wired magazine, October 2004

6. A paradox “Libraries enable unmediated access to the world’s journal literature through indexes and databases but give priority to their own collections when it comes to the discovery and delivery of books and other non-serial items” Judith Pearce. New Frameworks for Resource Discovery and Delivery (2005)

7. Union catalogues [1] “Union catalogues are still a missing part of the service framework. In order to realise the benefits of the significant investment libraries have made in these tools over the years, they need to be promoted as a primary means of access to wanted resources in library collections” Judith Pearce. New Frameworks for Resource Discovery and Delivery (2005)

8. Union catalogues [2] “Fewer but larger pools of metadata to support discovery would help” Lorcan Dempsey, D-Lib, April 2006 “Research libraries and their partners will deploy shared catalogs as a key component of providing affordable global access to larger, richer collections than any single institution could house locally” The changing nature of the catalog and its integration with other discovery tools (Karen Calhoun for the Library of Congress, 2006)

9. Alternative discovery pathways [1] Examples: – Google – Amazon – Libraries Australia Users need the choice of getting the item from a library Therefore, the local library system and its data remains important to the getting process

10. Alternative discovery pathways [2] “[Build] the necessary infrastructure to permit global discovery and delivery of information among open, loosely-coupled systems (e.g., find it on Google, get it from your library)” The changing nature of the catalog and its integration with other discovery tools (Karen Calhoun for the Library of Congress, 2006)

11. Review of future of NLA catalogue Considered the proposition that “the Library replace its catalogue by Libraries Australia, as the primary database to be searched by users” Examined the “enablers” and inhibitors” to this proposition

12. NLA’s assumptions We will continue to use our ILMS for workflow support Users should be able to find all relevant resources that they are able to access Users need to be fully aware of what they are searching We need to offer users a primary or “default” search target Most users prefer a simple (Google-like) search interface Users need an easy requesting interface with follow-up capability

13. Using Libraries Australia: enablers Users would access a wider pool of library resources Our union catalogue is now a free search target All records in our local catalogue are in the union catalogue The union catalogue now has better functionality We have power to improve the union catalogue’s functionality We can enhance the user’s experience through integration with other discovery services

14. Using Libraries Australia: Inhibitors Links to the local system Potential for user confusion Data missing from the union catalogue

15. Links to the local system Deep links – ugly interface transition – links are not standards based – hence there is a significant effort to maintain them Web Services protocol – Z39.50 Holdings Schema – Or XML Holdings Schema

16. Requesting the resource Need for a simple, stateless protocol Web Service OpenURL

17. Potential for user confusion Scope of their search Difficulty in navigating results in the union catalogue – Quality control – Clustering of result sets

18. Data missing from the union catalogue Copy-specific information Local information about formed collections Links to record sets – Linking URLs may not be permitted in union catalogues

19. The future [1] Progress standards process Analyse incorporation of institution specific data in union catalogue Examine use of access controls for links to record sets Changes to our web site

20. The future [2] Improve presentation of results sets in the union catalogue: – relevance ranking – result clustering Improve quality of data in union catalogue

21. What can my library do? Encourage my ILMS vendor to plan support for the Z39.50 Holdings Schema or the XML Holdings Schema: – http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/defns/holdings1-4.html – http://www.unt.edu/xmlholdings/ScopeOfProject.html http://www.unt.edu/xmlholdings/ScopeOfProject.html Raise with my ILMS vendor the need for a “web services” approach to receiving requests and monitoring their status

22. Conclusion The NLA aims to make Libraries Australia the primary database to be searched by our users The Library will undertake a medium term project to address the inhibitors that it has identified