prowe davepattern

12/Dec/2007 PROWE Project Event #1

Making the catalogue a good place to belipstick, cowbells and

serendipityDave Pattern, Library Systems Manager

University of Huddersfieldd.c.pattern@hud.ac.uk

http://slideshare.net/daveyp

Contents• does your OPAC suck?• OPAC survey findings• experiences at Huddersfield• other libraries• OPAC 2.0• further OPAC survey findings

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Does Your OPAC “Suck”?

“More Cowbell” …huh?

“Used to express that something is deeply lacking oomph... to express that something

is far from perfect, needs repair, fixing, rectifying.” (everything2.com)

The OPAC as a Pig• “After all, you can put lipstick on a pig,

but it's still very much a pig.” (Roy Tennant discussing the OPAC, Library Journal, 2005)

• “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” (attrib. Robert Heinlein, author)

Pig Ugly?

“Kissy, Kissy?”

OPAC Survey (2007)• On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is

extremely unhappy and 10 is extremely happy), how happy are you with your OPAC?

OPAC Survey (2007)• One criticism of OPACs is that they

rarely have cutting edge features that our users expect from a modern web site. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you think your OPAC meets the needs and expectations of your users?

OPAC Survey (2007)• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easy do you

think one of your average users finds your OPAC is to use?

4.6• On a scale of 1 to 10, how important do

you think it is that an OPAC is easy & intuitive to use?

Experiences at Huddersfield• definitely not OPAC 2.0• enhancements to the existing OPAC

– user suggestions from surveys– “2.0” inspired features– borrowing good ideas from other web sites – new features launched with no/low publicity– “perpetual beta”

• required staff buy-in and a willingness to experiment and take risks

Spell Checker• we monitored keyword searches over

a six month period and discovered approx 23% of searches gave zero results– most OPACs present the user with a

“dead end” page– a good search engine should still give

the user options on a failed search (“did you mean?”)

Spell Checker

Keyword Suggestions• failed keyword searches are cross

referenced with www.answers.com to provide new search suggestions

Keyword Suggestions

Borrowing Suggestions• we had details of over 2,000,000 CKOs

spanning 10 years stored in the library management system and gathering virtual dust

• Web 2.0 – “Data is the Next Intel Inside1”• historic circulation data can be mined2 to

uncover the hidden trends and links between potentially disparate library items

Borrowing Suggestions

Ratings and Comments

Other Editions• uses FRBR-y web services provided

by OCLC and LibraryThing to locate other editions and related works within local holdings– OCLC’s xISBN1

– LibraryThing’s thingISBN2

Other Editions

Email Alerts

RSS feeds

“If you build it, will they come?”

also borrowed other editions serendipity did you mean

Increase in Usage"Did You Mean" - 2006/07 Compared

May June July

2006 2007

Increase in Usage"People Who Borrowed This..." - 2006/07 Compared

May June July

2006 2007

Lipstick on the Pig“We need to focus more energy on important, systemic changes rather than cosmetic ones. If your system is more difficult to search and less effective than Amazon.com, then you have work to do. After all, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still very much a pig.” (Roy Tennant, Library Journal, 2005)

Problems ...Challenges!• there was no formal process for

discussing and agreeing new OPAC features– so we organised a web/library 2.0 afternoon for staff

• some initial scepticism from staff– would users think borrowing suggestions were

formal recommendations from the library?– aren’t borrowing suggestions just for selling books?– how relevant will the suggestions be?

• would sudden changes confuse users?

Solutions• encourage suggestions from staff• include users in decision making

process• encourage play and experimentation• don’t be afraid to make mistakes!• look widely for ideas• “build crappy prototypes fast”• monitor usage

– if usage is poor then remove it

Playing and experimenting

Searching for books by colour

Search visualisations

CKO visualisations

New! Keyword cloud (prototype)

New! Keyword cloud (live OPAC)

Other Libraries• Ann Arbor District Library• North Carolina State University

(Endeca)• LibraryThing for Libraries• Open Source OPACs

Ann Arbor District Library• early adopter of “2.0” (John Blyberg)• OPAC deeply embedded in Library

portal• virtual catalogue cards (with graffiti!)• user tagging, ratings, and reviews• borrowing suggestions• RSS feeds• http://www.aadl.org/catalog/

North Carolina State University

• facetted browsing• http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/• http://endeca.com

LibraryThing for Libraries• integrates LibraryThing data into the

OPAC– tags– borrowing suggestions– other editions

• www.librarything.com/forlibraries/

Open Source OPACs• Scriblio (formerly WPOpac)

– uses WordPress (blogging software)• VuFind

– uses PHP & MySQL• Lucene & Solr

– Project Backlight (Univ. of Virginia)– FacBackOPAC– Huddersfield (blog post)

The Traditional Vendors• Talis Platform

– “an environment for building next generation applications and services”

• Ex Libris Primo– “one-stop solution for the discovery and

delivery of local and remote resources”• Innovative Interfaces Encore

– “goes beyond the online-catalog model to provide a better patron experience ”

OPAC 2.0• “The best way to predict the future is

to invent it.”(Alan Kay, computer scientist and

former Xerox PARC researcher)

• “The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.”

(William Gibson, science fiction authorand creator of the word “cyberspace”)

OPAC 2.0• shopping list of features:

– spell checking (“did you mean?”)– relevancy ranking, search refining, and facets– manual recommendations (“best bets”)– automated suggestions (based on both global

and user-specific data)– user participation (“read-write OPAC”)– foster communities of interest

OPAC 2.0• shopping list of features:

– improve serendipity– expose hidden links between items– APIs and Web Services to expose data– promote unintended uses– user personalisation– embed external data (e.g. Wikipedia,

LibraryThing)– RSS feeds and OpenSearch

Quick OPAC Survey – Features

• Please rate how important you feel the following features are to your users in a modern OPAC.– embedding the OPAC in external sites (e.g. portals) 8.7– “did you mean” spelling suggestions 8.6– enriched content (book covers, ToCs, etc) 8.4– RSS feeds (e.g. new books, searches, etc) 7.8– facetted browsing (e.g. like NCSU Library) 7.4– “people who borrowed this” suggestions 6.5– user tagging of items (i.e. folksonomy) 6.1– user added comments and reviews 6.0– personalised suggestions (e.g. like Amazon) 5.9– user added ratings for items5.7

Implementation of Features

012345678910

already got getting soon importance

Features – Future Trends?Rate of I ncrease of Feature I mplementation

72%130%

311%279%

189% 167%

012345678910

% increase in "getting soon" compared to "already got" importance

Importance (getting soon)Feature I mportance

8.7 8.6 8.47.8

6.56.1 6.1 6.0 5.7

9.18.8 8.8

8.48.9

7.8 8.07.4

importance (all) importance (already got) importance (getting soon)

Technology Adoption Lifecycle

Technology Adoption - Now

Technology Adoption – Q1 08?

Importance – UK respondents

8.17.8

5.95.7

5.45.8

8.7 8.8 8.6

7.97.7

6.76.2 6.2

6.0 5.9

stealt

h OPAC

did yo

RSS feed

also b

commen

UK respondents non-UK respondents

Thank you!

http://www.daveyp.com/blog/

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