Discovery Services for Libraries

DISCOVERY SERVICES FOR LIBRARIES

Marshall Breeding Independent Consult, Author, Founder and Publisher, Library Technology Guides http://www.librarytechnology.org/ http://twitter.com/mbreeding

October 28, 2013

Internet Librarian 2013

Summary 

The realm of technologies helping libraries provide access to their collections and services through their web presence continues to evolve and innovate. Indexbased, or “web-scale” discovery services have become a mainstay in academic libraries in helping their users find the materials they need among the vast resources available to them. Socially oriented discovery interfaces and portal products help public and other libraries bring together a variety of service and content offerings. Breeding gives an update on the realm of these public-facing technology products and services and takes a look into the trends going forward.

Discovery Resources

Discovery on LTG

The Evolution of Library Resource Discovery

Discovery in ARL Libraries

http://www.librarytechnology.org/arl-discovery.pl

Online Catalog

ILS Data

Search:

Scope of Search Search Results





Books, Journals, and Media at the Title Level Not in scope:  Articles

 Book

Chapters  Digital objects

Next-gen Catalogs or Discovery Interface  

Single search box Query tools Did you mean  Type-ahead 

  

Relevance ranked results Faceted navigation Enhanced visual displays Cover art  Summaries, reviews, 



Recommendation services

 





Scope of Search Books, Journals, and Media at the Title Level Other local and open access content Not in scope: Articles  Book Chapters  Digital objects 

Discovery Interface search model Search:

Local Index

ILS Data

Digital Collections

ProQuest

Search Results

MetaSearch Engine

EBSCOhost

… MLA Bibliography

ABC-CLIO

Real-time query and responses

Discovery from Local to Web-scale 

Initial products focused on interface improvements AquaBrowser, Endeca, Primo, Encore, VuFind,  Civica Sorcer, Axiell Arena  Mostly locally-installed software 



Current phase is focused on pre-populated indexes that aim to deliver Web-scale discovery Primo Central (Ex Libris)  Summon (Serials Solutions)  WorldCat Local (OCLC)  EBSCO Discovery Service (EBSCO)  Encore ES (+EDS Index) 

Public Library Information Portal

ILS Data Digital Collections

Search:

Usagegenerated Data

Customer Profile

Consolidated Index

Search Results

Web Site Content Community Information Aggregated Content packages

…

Customerprovided content Reference Sources Archives

Pre-built harvesting and indexing

Discovery services as Website Replacement 





Portal environment that includes customized content management service that can fulfill typical offerings on library Web sites Full integration between Web site and resource discovery (ideally) Examples:  Axiell

Arena  Infor Iguana

Web-scale Index-based Discovery (2009- present)

Digital Collections

Search:

Customer Profile

Consolidated Index

Search Results

Usagegenerated Data

ILS Data

Web Site Content Institutional Repositories Aggregated Content packages

…

Open Access

E-Journals Reference Sources

Pre-built harvesting and indexing

Web-scale Search Problem

ILS Data Digital Collections

Search Results

Consolidated Index

Search:

Web Site Content Institutional Repositories Aggregated Content packages

…

E-Journals

??? Problem in how to deal with resources not provided to ingest into consolidated index

Pre-built harvesting and indexing Non Participating Content Sources

Expanding the Depth of Discovery

Citations / Metadata > Full Text 

 

Citations or structured metadata provide key data to power search & retrieval and faceted navigation Indexing Full-text of content amplifies access Important to understand depth indexing  Currency,

dates covered, full-text or citation  Many other factors

Full-text Book indexing 



HathiTrust: 11 million volumes, 5.3 million titles, 263,000 serial titles, 3.5 billion pages HathiTrust in Discovery Indexes  Primo

Central (Jan 20, 2012) [previously indexed only metadata]  EBSCO Discovery Service (Sept 8 2011)  WorldCat Local (Sept 7, 2011)  Summon (Mar 28, 2011)

Challenge for Relevancy 

 





Technically feasible to index hundreds of millions or billions of records through Lucene or SOLR Difficult to order records in ways that make sense Many fairly equivalent candidates returned for any given query Must rely on use-based and social factors to improve relevancy rankings Objectivity: Does relevancy reflect bias or publisher preferences

Challenges for Collection Coverage 

  



To work effectively, discovery services need to cover comprehensively the body of content represented in library collections What about publishers that do not participate? Is content indexed at the citation or full-text level? What are the restrictions for non-authenticated users? How can libraries understand the differences in coverage among competing services?

Evaluating the Coverage of Indexbased Discovery Services 









Intense competition: how well the index covers the body of scholarly content stands as a key differentiator Difficult to evaluate based on numbers of items indexed alone. Important to ascertain now your library’s content packages are represented by the discovery service. Important to know what items are indexed by citation and which are full text Important to know whether the discovery service favors the content of any given publisher

Non-Cooperative Scenarios 

Two major players are both publishers and discovery service providers  EBSCO







– ProQuest

ProQuest does not provide content to other discovery services EBSCO does not provide content to other discovery services Issue currently being pressed by Orbis Cascade Alliance.

Open Discovery Initiative 

 



NISO Work Group to Develop Standards and Recommended Practices for Library Discovery Services Based on Indexed Search Informal meeting called at ALA Annual 2011 Co-Chaired by Marshall Breeding and Jenny Walker Term: Dec 2011 – Dec 2013

Balance of Constituents 23

Libraries Marshall Breeding, Vanderbilt University Jamene Brooks-Kieffer, Kansas State University Laura Morse, Harvard University Ken Varnum, University of Michigan

Sara Brownmiller, University of Oregon Lucy Harrison, College Center for Library Automation (D2D liaison/observer) Michele Newberry

Publishers Lettie Conrad, SAGE Publications Roger Schonfeld, ITHAKA/JSTOR/Portico Jeff Lang, Thomson Reuters

Linda Beebe, American Psychological Assoc Aaron Wood, Alexander Street Press

Service Providers Jenny Walker, Ex Libris Group John Law, Serials Solutions Michael Gorrell, EBSCO Information Services

David Lindahl, University of Rochester (XC) Jeff Penka, OCLC (D2D liaison/observer)

ODI Project Goals: 





Identify … needs and requirements of the three stakeholder groups in this area of work. Create recommendations and tools to streamline the process by which information providers, discovery service providers, and librarians work together to better serve libraries and their users. Provide effective means for librarians to assess the level of participation by information providers in discovery services, to evaluate the breadth and depth of content indexed and the degree to which this content is made available to the user.

ODI Timeline 25

Milestone

Target Date

Appointment of working group

Dec 2011

Approval of charge and initial work plan

Mar 2012

Agreement on process and tools

Jun 2012

Completion of information gathering

Jan 2013

Completion of initial draft

Jun 2013

Completion of final draft

Sep 2013

Public Review Period commences

Sep 2013

Status

Social Discovery

A more social user experience     

Ratings, rankings, reviews Enhanced content Connections with the library Connections with other users Challenge: Must have critical mass of engagement to have an impact

Social Strategies 

Inherent  BiblioCommons:

design and infrastructure created with social flavor and features



Layered or integrated  ChiliFresh:

integrate a third party social platform into any given library catalog or discovery service

Socially-powered discovery 







Leverage use data to increase effectiveness of discovery Usage data can identify important or popular materials to inform relevancy engines Identify related materials that may not otherwise be uncovered through keyword matching Be careful to avoid introducing bias loops

E-Book Integration

Critical concern for public libraries   

Most libraries offer e-book lending programs Strong demand: increasing use statistics Print lending remains vigorous

Commercial library e-book lending services    

OverDrive 3M Cloud Library Baker & Taylor: Axis 360 “Douglas County Model”  Locally

curated e-book collections and lending platform

E-book Lending Models  



Phase I: Link out to e-book lending service Phase II: Load MARC records in local catalog, then link out on individual titles Phase III: Discovery and lending operations performed fully within the library’s catalog or discovery environment

Full e-book lending 



Discovery of print and e-book titles and copies simultaneously E-book transactions represented within patron’s library account  List

of charged items, due dates  Service options: renew, return, etc. 

Ability to check-out and download e-books into ereader

Library Interfaces with e-book Integration      

Polaris PowerPAC BiblioCommons SirsiDynix eResource Central Innovative Interfaces: Encore ES TLC: LS2 PAC OdiloTK from OdiloTID

The e-book integration ecosystem  





E-book lending services must expose APIs Online catalog or discovery services must consume APIs and adjust interface design and business logic to accommodate discovery and lending operations Challenge: each e-book service provider’s APIs are different Response: Work toward consistent or standard suite of APIs

Library Technology Reports 



The Current State of Library Resource Discovery Products: Context, Library Perspectives, and Vendor Positions In press for Publication January 2014

LTR Components    

Vender questionnaire Library Survey Industry announcements Other articles and publications

Library Discovery Survey 





Survey executed to gather data from libraries regarding their experiences with discovery services Responses received by 396 Libraries: 29 Countries represented, 252 responses from United States

Academic

247

Consortium Government Agency Law Medical Museum National Other Public Special State Theology

15 2 7 5 1 1 1 96 14 4 3

Overall Satisfaction

Overall Effectiveness

Comprehensiveness: Academic Libraries

Relevancy Effectiveness

Objectivity in Discovery

Objectivity in Discovery: Academics

Example Product rating chart

Discovery Trends

Discovery Service Installations Product

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

EBSCO EDS

5,000

Primo

12

AquaBrowser

55 339

Encore

72

LS2 PAC

37

Civica Sorcer Axiell Arena

53 506

111 101

64

69

74

72 109

56

72

46

58

88

Summon

Enterprise

Installed

77

58

1900

750

365 73

305

50 164

214 158

704

75

100 102

328

16 7

12

22

61

57

33

3

42

76

Trend Tendency toward re-alignment with management systems   



Alma + Primo / Primo Central Sierra + Encore WorldCat Local + WorldShare Management Services Intota + Summon

Counter trend Many libraries continue separate discovery strategies  

Open source discovery + licensed Web-scale index EBSCO Discovery Service: strategy to integrate with any back-end ILS or LSP

Trend Increased uptake in academic libraries of Web-scale discovery services 

Almost a “must-have” product as one component of overall resource discovery and dissemination strategy

Trend Content providers cooperate with discovery service providers for indexing in Web-scale services 

New content partnerships continue to be announced

Counter Trend A&I providers and aggregators less likely to participate  

Competitive issues Need to preserve the value of maintaining subscriptions

Trend Public libraries moving back to discovery interface associated with their ILS 



ILS Online Catalog modules now offer most discovery interface characteristics Examples: Most libraries using Polaris ILS use Polaris PowerPAC catalog interface. Displacing AquaBrowser or Endeca  TLC libraries have largely abandoned AquaBrowser for LS2 PAC 

Counter Trend BiblioCommons 

BiblioCommons is the primary discovery layer widely implemented in public libraries that continues to replace ILS online catalog modules

Trend Increased universe of discovery through highly-shared infrastructure 

Built-in resource sharing by many libraries participating in shared automation environment

Major Products

Serials Solutions: Summon 

Launched in June 2009  First

“web-scale” discovery service  Unified search results, facets, etc 

Summon 2.0 released in 2013  Emphasis

on tools to provide research assistance beyond search results  Topic explorer, scholar profiles, database recommender, content spotlighting, etc

Ex Libris: Primo / Primo Central 

Primo (discovery interface) launched in 2005  Deployed



Primo Central: article-level index introduced in 2009  Index



locally or cloud

maintained by Ex Libris, cloud hosted

Scholar Rank: technology designed to order search results according to scholarly importance

EBSCO Discovery Service 



  

Extends EBSCOhost platform with non-EBSCO content Users comfortable with EBSCOhost interface will easily adapt to EDS Platform Blending Direct delivery of full-text from EBSCO sources Linking to full text for non-EBSCO content

http://www.ebscohost.com/discovery

WorldCat Local 

Statistics from OCLC web site:  952+

million articles with one-click access to full text  38+ million digital items from trusted sources like Google Books, OAIster and HathiTrust  14+ million eBooks from leading aggregators and publishers  48+ million pieces of evaluative content (Tables of Contents, cover art, summaries, etc.) included at no additional charge  232+ million books in libraries worldwide http://www.oclc.org/worldcat-local.en.html

Innovative Interfaces: Encore 





Initial version: discovery interface only with local index Encore Synergy: XML Web services interfaces to resource targets for articles Encore / EDS integration: agreement with EBSCO to integrate EDS for mutual subscribers

BiblioCommons: BiblioCore     

Discovery service oriented to public libraries Social features – share reading lists, etc E-book discovery and lending integration Full replacement for online catalog Pooling of patrons across participating library organizations

Blacklight   

Open source discovery interface Originated at the University of Virginia Increasing interest by academic libraries  Stanford,



Columbia, Cornell, etc

No open access article-level index

VuFind    



Open source discovery interface Originally developed at Villanova University Widely deployed Web-scale indexes integrated by subscribers through APIs No open access article-level index

Axiell: Arena   





Comprehensive library portal Discovery + Web site features Positioned as discovery interface for Axiell’s several ILS products Discovery layer for Archival products: CALM and Adlib Can front both Library and Archival or museum products simultaneously: CultereNet

Infor: Iguana     

Comprehensive library portal Discovery + Web site features Widget based architecture Positioned as marketing and communications portal Replaces both online catalog and Web site

Catalog 2.0 



Edited by Sally Chambers Chapter: “Nextgeneration discovery: an overview of the European scene”

Library Technology Report: 2007 

 

Introduction to nextgeneration library catalogs or discovery interfaces Trends Profiles of major products

Next-Gen Library Catalogs Marshall Breeding Neal-Schuman Publishers March 2010

Volume 1 of The Tech Set

Questions and discussion