Improving Access to Geoscience Resources via Content

Enhancement

Linda R. Musser

Pennsylvania State UniversityOctober 2011

What is content enhancement?

The addition of data elements in order to improve search retrieval and/or item description.

Examples: table of contents keywords summaries

Essentially additional metadata

More examples….

Dykas and Stevens, “The Richer the Records, the Better the Results: Options for Enriching Bibliographic Records in Your OPAC” 2011 MOBIUS Conference.

2009 OCLC report

Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want

Essential findings:

Users rely on and expect enhanced content, including summaries/abstracts and tables of contents.

These elements enhance searching and aid in identifying sources worth pursuing.

What Users Want

What Librarians Want

What Users Want

Discovery-related information elements beyond author and title, such as summaries, excerpts and tables of contents, are essential aspects.

Libraries need to make it easier for users to quickly ascertain whether items meet their needs …to help users decide if it is worth their time to obtain the items.

By the numbers….

By the numbers…

423 words

8 instances of ‘environmental’

10 instances of ‘geology’

10 instances of ‘introduction’

Value of Content Enrichment

Tables of contents increased use

• With table of contents, use increased by 45% (Morris, 2001)

• Circulation increased by 20% with table of contents/summary (Faiks, 2007)

• Circulation increased 25% - 50% for materials over five years old (Tosaka & Weng, 2011)

Tables of contents increased discoverability• Average table of contents added 20 times the number

of unique words as title alone.

Prevalence of Enriched Records

Tosaka & Weng, College & Research Libraries, v.72 no. 5 (2011):412-427.

Enhancement Services

Backstage Marcive

Total records enriched

2843 2167

Table of contents added

2555 1515

Summaries added

1717 1445

Other n/a 282

One-month sample of new records for PSU.

Manual Addition of Table of Contents data

Challenges include:• Time involved.• Will cataloging department cooperate?• How will titles be selected? • How deeply to transcribe?• Who can/will edit records?• Will records be shared?

Manual Addition of Table of Contents data

Reformat Library of Congress data

Step 1: Copy data from Library of Congress

table of contents site. (CIP)

Manual Addition of Table of Contents data

Reformat Library of Congress data

Step 2: Text reformatted using Notepad.

Manual Addition of Table of Contents data

Transcription directly from item in hand.

Manual Addition of Table of Contents data

Transcription directly from item in hand.

Table of contents field for

The Physics of Glaciers

Instructions online at: www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/cataloging/training/maintenance/tocnotes.html

Manual Addition of Table of Contents data

More complex table of contents

Manual Addition of Table of Contents data

Transcription - More complex table of contents

Table of contents field for

History of Iron Technology in India

Manual Addition of Table of Contents data

Transcription – Even more complex table of contents

Manual Addition of Table of Contents data

Transcription – Even more complex table of contents

Requires multiple 505 [contents] fields

Table of contents field for

Groundwater and Climate in Africa

Other Considerations

Will emerging discovery tools/systems make content enrichment moot?

• Google Books project – snippets• HathiTrust mission“to dramatically improve

access to library materials”• Amazon – “Look inside”• Web-scale discovery services – Summon,

WorldCat Local, etc.

Potential Impact on Access to Geoscience Literature

Long-standing challenges of series and analytics (or lack thereof).

Balance value of enhancement against increase in direct access to digital version thanks to surge of digitization projects for government publications.

OCLC Report Conclusions

This study is far from the first to find that enrichment data such as summaries and contents notes are important contributors to end-user searching; that users want enriched records; and that enriched records increase usage of library materials.

Libraries need to work together to find ways to share the costs of enriching discovery systems and keyword indexes with this content.

Within the library community explore how to obtain or produce enrichment content (tables of contents, summaries, etc.) through data mining, the use of APIs, partnerships with publishers and vendors, and collaborative library projects

Future?

OCLC recommendationsProduce a guide for libraries that describes the options for adding

more enrichment data (tables of contents, summaries, etc.) to bibliographic descriptions in library catalogs.

Compare the costs and benefits of a variety of approaches (manual enrichment, data mining, vendor data, APIs, etc.).

Engage in some discussion within community, both geoscience librarians as well as catalogers and others, regarding the future of the catalog.