[Web4lib] Wired Campus > After Losing Users in Catalogs, Libraries Find Better Search Software | 09-28-09

[McKiernan, Gerard [LIB]]

Colleagues/

>From The Latest Chronicle Of Higher Education 

/Gerry 

By Marc Parry

Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. So you might think
that typing his name into Virgo, Virginia's online library catalog,
would start you off with a book about him.

Jean A. Bauer tried it the other night. At the top of the results list
were papers from a physics conference in Brazil.

The problem is that traditional online library catalogs don't tend to
order search results by ranked relevance, and they can befuddle users
with clunky interfaces. [snip]

That's changing because of two technology trends. First, a growing
number of universities are shelling out serious money for sophisticated
software that makes exploring their collections more like the
easy-to-filter experience you might find in an online Sears catalog.

[snip]

A key feature of this software genre is that it helps you make sense of
data through "faceted" searching, common when you shop online for a new
jacket or a stereo system. Say you type in "Susan B. Anthony." The new
system will ask if you want books by her or about her, said Susan L.
Gibbons, vice provost and dean of Rochester's River Campus Libraries.
Users can also sort by media type, language, and date.

These products can also rank search results by relevance and use prompts
of "Did you mean ... ?"

"It's sort of our answer to, Why it is you need a library when you have
Google?" said Ms. Gibbons. "What this is going to do is show how much
you've been missing."

[snip] 

Mr. Breeding, who founded the Web site Library Technology Guides, has
observed "pockets of resistance" in the library community. Some argue
that new search products-sometimes called next-generation catalogs or
discovery interfaces-amount to a dumbing-down of catalogs.

By contrast, traditional search tools reinforce the idea that library
users need a clear understanding of the different materials involved in
research, Mr. Breeding said, such as the difference between articles and
monographs. New interfaces that mix many different information sources
blur all that, he said.

And then there are the slew of devil-in-the-details questions that arise
from the content convergence.

Will users understand it? Will they find what they want? Will books be
properly represented among the flood of articles? What about image
collections? Could the pile of stuff just get too big?

[snip]


A 'Shift of Power'


In the open-source world, at least 10 academic libraries have turned to
VuFind, which originated at Villanova. Virginia's Blacklight, with
Stanford University as a development partner, is in a beta phase. And
Rochester's eXtensible Catalog, or XC, backed by $1.2-million from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will be rolled out in the spring.

The shift from commercial products to open-source ones is about more
than money, though.

Bess Sadler, chief architect of the online library environment at the
University of Virginia, sees the open-source Blacklight project as a
"shift of power," as she wrote recently in the journal Library Hi Tech.
The idea is that libraries, which know their local needs, should control
the technology that patrons use to gain access to their collections.
That's a change from the one-size-is-good-enough-for-everybody,
commercially managed model that has prevailed in the industry.

[snip]

With an open-source system, a library can set its own relevance rankings
and adjust them based on what users want. By maintaining the system
itself, Virginia is now able to search by musical instrument.

The downside is libraries need someone on staff who can install and
maintain the open-source program. So far, vendors aren't supporting
products like VuFind the way they support established open-source
products like Koha and Evergreen, both integrated library systems, said
Mr. Breeding. [snip]

With Blacklight, you won't be able to get individual journal articles.
If you're doing research on cell division, for example, a search will
tell you that Virginia subscribes to the journal about cell division,
but you'll have to go to a journal database for the article.

[snip]

At Virginia, the open-source Blacklight has paid off for Ms. Bauer.

"You know the feeling of when you go into the stacks, and you're usually
looking for one book, but then it's almost always the book that's next
to it that's the one you really need?" she asked. "It helps replicate a
bit of that experience."

And if you search for Thomas Jefferson, it even starts you off with a
book about him.

[ http://chronicle.com/article/After-Losing-Users-in/48588/ ]
[Subscribers?]

EnjOY

/Gerry 

Gerry McKiernan

Associate Professor

Science and Technology Librarian

Iowa State University Library

Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu     

There Are No Answers, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying

The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed /
Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace