Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Judy Luther, Maureen C. Kelly
A casual Google search may well be good enough for a daily task. But if you are a college student conducting his or her first search for peer-reviewed content, or an established scholar taking up a new line of inquiry, then the stakes are a lot higher. The challenge for academic libraries, caught in the seismic shift from print to electronic resources, is to offer an experience that has the simplicity of Google—which users expect—while searching the library’s rich digital and print collections—which users need. Increasingly, they are turning to a new generation of search tools, called discovery, for help.
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"The Next Generation of Discovery"
ReplyDeleteThe stage is set for a simpler search for users, but choosing a product is much more complex.
by Judy Luther and Maureen C. Kelly
Content
ReplyDelete- Scope and depth of content being indexed.
- Richness (and consistency) of metadata included in the indexes.
- Frequency of content updates.
- Ease of incorporating local content
To create a unified index, vendors need to secure permission from each publisher. While agreements take time, the amount of content included in the indexes is growing steadily. As more libraries implement discovery tools, primary publishers that have not yet agreed are likely to feel pressure from libraries that expect acquired content to be accessible through these tools.
While it’s possible to determine which databases or individual titles are included, a detailed comparison of discovery services at the title level is an overwhelming task, as coverage of titles varies based on the depth of the archive and the currency of the content.
Local content in institutional repositories can be included with OAI (Open Archive Initiative) harvesting of metadata and ingestion of MARC records from the OPAC. Catalogers may weigh in on the fields from MARC records that are indexed, which can affect discovery. Librarians may also need to consider special collections or files with audio, video, and images.
Librarians need to think about the role they want discovery to play in their libraries. If the tool is considered a place to start and a way to reach more library users, then complete coverage in a unified index may not be necessary for the undergraduate who is simply seeking “an answer.” Others might decide it is even more important for the starting point to be as complete as possible. If the single search box is viewed as being the front door to all the libraries’ resources, then librarians also need to consider how to present what is not included in the unified index.
Search
ReplyDelete- Simplicity of the interface.
- Quality of results, including relevance ranking.
- Ability to customize search and relevance settings.
- Availability of tools for navigating search results (such as clustering, facets, etc.).
- Ease of incorporation into existing institutional access tools.
- Support for new use environments, including mobile access and social-networking features.
Discovery tools can effectively integrate libraries’ resources with a single query across multiple databases that normally function as information silos. In essence, these tools create a unified space for integrating access to a diverse group of digital and print resources.
Vendors are fine-tuning their algorithms to adjust the relevance of search results. For example, many users expect searches to display a book itself before reviews of that book in a results set. With journal articles, books, newspapers, conference proceedings, and other formats indexed together, vendors must consider how to weight the content types in response to queries.
The single search box lets users approach discovery tools with what they know and rely on filters to narrow the results. Scott Anderson at Millersville University, PA, which uses EBSCO Discovery Service, says, “We liked the idea that discovery tools reduce the cognitive load that the user has to know about the library.” Facets that enable users to filter results by content type, subject terms, publication date, language, and other categories can also serve to acquaint users with the scope of literature available on a topic.
Librarians will need to decide where to place the search box on the library’s website. Reference librarians may wish to identify additional resources not included in search results, or to highlight finding aids to help orient users. The single search box can be placed in course management applications such as Blackboard, or, ideally, into the student’s workflow, wherever that may be. As Jennifer Duvernay at Arizona State University (ASU), an early installation of Summon, notes, “We can’t wait for the students to come to us; we have to go to them, embedding the search where they are working.”
Fit
ReplyDelete- Ease of implementation.
- Compatibility with existing software and content.
- Responsiveness of the vendor and alignment of priorities regarding future developments.
- Overall customer support, including reputation and prior dealings with the vendor.
The desire to customize a system will vary by library. Librarians are inquiring about local control of system elements, from appearance (including labels for facets) to the ability to modify relevance ranking. Library staff with the technical capability to manage application programming interfaces (APIs) may want to add links to databases that are not included and establish profiles for disciplines. To incorporate local content seamlessly may involve including additional format types (such as government documents) or influencing metadata fields that the vendor indexes.
Holdings display and real-time data on availability of items will be important for those involved with consortial lending. While link resolvers appear to be compatible, data management may be required to address holdings or other factors that receive new visibility.
Cost (motivation and benefits)
ReplyDelete- As a new service in addition to existing tools.
- Instead of other finding tools or delays to other upgrades.
- Justification in light of libraries’ goals and objectives.
Discovery tools are evolving rapidly with input from partner libraries and through usability studies with end users. Early adopters were eager to address the growing number of databases and worked with their vendor partners to influence development. For libraries now looking at these tools, the sequence of planned enhancements may influence purchase decisions as a common feature set emerges to meet market expectations.
Discovery tools can leverage the institution’s library investment through increased use of library resources, which can demonstrate value to provosts. Better access for undergraduates results in greater productivity for its users. Librarians at George Washington University, which chose EBSCO Discovery Service, have studied the options and see discovery services as “a tool that would reveal our content so that it’s not hidden.”
Many librarians who believe that discovery tools are a good first step in meeting the needs of the undergraduate student who is unfamiliar with the library’s resources, discover it also meets the needs of researchers. Bryan Skib, associate university librarian for collections at the University of Michigan Library, which chose Summon, notes, “While very good for known-item searching, it’s ideal for interdisciplinary research and for those who don’t know what they’re looking for or what databases to use.”
Thanks to consortial agreements, small libraries can have access to as many databases as much larger libraries. As a result, the need for a single search across multiple databases is even more widespread than when federated search tools launched ten years ago. Schools with strong distance education programs acknowledge that today’s learners value tools that support their operating in a 24/7 self-service environment.
Libraries have been striving to respond to this challenge for years. The metasearch tools of the past decade—while different (and, ultimately, too slow)—were the first attempts to meet this user expectation by querying each of the databases a library subscribed to and returning a single set of results.
ReplyDeleteEnter discovery, which is modeled on the Google-style approach of building and then searching a unified index of available resources, instead of searching each database individually. While Google’s general index focuses on publicly available web content, these new discovery tools—including EBSCO Discovery Service and Serials Solutions’ Summon, among others—provide unified indexes of the licensed scholarly publications combined with locally held content (like the catalog).
In effect, discovery tools make good on the promise of those earlier search solutions by shifting some of the IT management responsibilities to the cloud, streamlining search, and improving the relevance ranking of results. And users get to enter a single query—à la Google—to search the rich content of the collection with the speed they have come to expect. Still brand new, and in action in only a handful of academic libraries, these tools are expected to transform search as we know it.
Until recently, scholars and students have been left to augment Google results by also searching library databases individually. Librarians hoped that metasearch engines, also referred to as federated search engines, would simplify searching across these databases, but they have fallen short of librarian expectations—owing in part to structural complexities, as connectors to each resource are hard to maintain. They have also disappointed users—due to their slowness of response, problems with relevance ranking, and inadequate handling of duplicates.
The new unified-index discovery tools offer great potential for simplifying scholarly search and making it more effective. As with all technology solutions, however, myriad details need to be sorted out in the move from concept to operational success. And the differences in how these tools are being implemented have implications for both libraries and for the publishers that supply the information.
Discovery tools
ReplyDeleteLong term? Will the purportedly low switching costs for cloud-based services allow libraries to switch products as the services mature? Will selection of discovery tools be influenced primarily by content coverage factors? What will be the key points of differentiation for these tools as the market matures?
Keeping up? Patron-driven acquisitions are growing quickly in large academic libraries eager to offer readers more ebooks. Will vendors developing discovery tools keep pace with innovations in the consumer sector as discovery and delivery adapt to mobile readers?
Blind side? If Google addresses questions of content coverage in Google Scholar, or introduces other game-changing innovations, will Google Scholar become a serious competitor that dramatically alters the market?
Creators, not just finders? Google Scholar and other search engines have become significant coproducers of academic knowledge by influencing search results and affecting what is easily discovered—with implications for usage, citation, and impact factor. Will publishers (and authors) recognize the potential impact of discovery tools on the community at large and address the risks as well as the opportunities?
Other options
ReplyDeleteLJ’s David Rapp on five alternatives to the unified index tools
Auto-Graphics’ AGent Search Provides federated search that can be integrated into the XML-based AGent Web Services module or via a branded website. Staff can access statistics regarding database, website, and other usage. Users can also customize the look and feel of the interface.
Innovative Interfaces’ Encore Integrates federated search and harvested content. Functionality includes faceted search, and such social networking features as tag clouds and community reviews. Allows application development via its application programming interface (API).
SirsiDynix’s Enterprise Provides federated and harvested searching and faceted results. Social media and mobile support included. Users can save URLs of searches or RSS feeds to be informed of new library materials. Also allows library staff to create customized patron profiles.
TLC’s LS2 PAC Catalog module includes federated search with faceted results, as well as such social features as user-subscribed RSS result feeds, tags (which are fed back into the search index to help refine search results), and user reviews.
VTLS’s Chivas New discovery product slated for launch in May 2011, this is characterized as combining the functionality of VTLS’s Visualizer discovery interface with that of its Chamo social OPAC to “produce a unified user experience, combining broad discovery across multiple resources with full OPAC access through faceted results.”