The ABES Discovery Study

Journées ABES, May 15, 2013Maurits van der GraafPleiade Management & Consultancy

The ABES Discovery study

What do we want to achieve?

What can we learn from others?

What are we going to do?

What do we want to achieve for:end-users in higher education institutes

• Access to digital and print collection: an user-friendly discovery tool that gives access to the digital and print collection of their own library/institute at title and article level

• Access to other digital collections in France via ILL: if their own library has no access to certain e-content, end-user is directed to interlibrary loan to get access.

• Enhanced access to French e-content: enhanced access to French language e-content and/or e-content by French publishers.

• French language support in the discovery layer: an user-friendly interface that support French language searching.

What do we want to achieve for:the French HE libraries

• Interact with the approx. 22 presently installed discovery tools at French HE libraries

• Offer a discovery service for libraries with a local link resolver/knowledgebase

• Offer a discovery service for libraries without a local link resolver/knowledgebase

What do we want to achieve for:the French national library infrastructure

• Should fit in & enhance the French national library infrastructure: • The development of the shared ILS system in the cloud (with

shared electronic resource management functionality)• The ISTEX platform with digital content licensed by national

licenses• Discovery & access to e-content with focus on scholarly

literature: • Complementary service to SUDOC with regard to access to e-

journals at article level; to e-books (title and chapter level); access to other media types (f.e. enriched publications)

• Discovery & access to French scholarly e-content: • Enhance discovery and access to French language e-content and

to e-content by French publishers.

Discovery systems or components studied

• Self-built services:• Trove – national discovery service (National Library of Australia)• FINNA – national discovery service (Digital Library of Finland)• Suchkiste – discovery service for national licences, Germany• EZB link resolver – national link resolver, Germany• Journals Online & Print – webservice indicating availability,

Germany• University Library of Utrecht (new policy following self-built

discovery service)• Existing webscale discovery services:• RERO (Switzerland)• Primo, ED, Summon, WordCat Local and Google Scholar

• Other relevant services:• Resource discovery programme JISC, UK• Knowledgebase + (JISC); GOKb

The discovery portal presents the user interface and provides the connections with the other components.

The portal connects to a platform with metadata and/or full text indexes of the scholarly literature, also called a centralised index.

Locator services will point end-users to access of full text provided by their library (either digital or print collections).

Connectors to institutional systems (OPAC and authentication services) for reserving/borrowing print items

What did we learn from others?

Discovery portal

• Requirements for French discovery tool:• ‘Normal’ modern user interface requirements with regard to

search, recommender options, presentation of the results, export options, sorting options, user accounts, social features

• Special requirement: French language support by (1) spelling suggestions (2) sorting/limit on language (3) search term translator

• Results:• VUFind used by FINNA and Suchkiste (Open Source; maintenance

by community; used by > 100 academic libraries)• All portals comparable (see Appendix C) with few exceptions:

• VUFind lacking export options• Spelling suggestions in French only by Google Scholar, Primo and

Summon• Search term translator – not existing, Google Scholar could develop it

What did we learn from others?

Centralised index

• From the do-it-yourself scenario study: • Feasible to built an index for a selection of worldwide scholarly literature• Not feasible to built index for entire worldwide scholarly literature: too

much resources needed for collection, processing, maintenance• Building your own index gives freedom to enrich & redistribute

metadata• No full text indexing observed

• From the study of the existing discovery tools:• All claim nearly complete coverage• Google Scholar has a strict definition of scholarly literature• Mixture of metadata and full text indexing• Only ExLibris has policy to connect more than 1 index to discovery

portal; the others have only 1 centralised index• All have match & merge mechanisms to enrich the metadata received

from primary publishers, but none can redistribute metadata

What did we learn from others?

National locator service

• Do-it-yourself scenario:• EZB link resolver: a national link resolver using data from the EZB

union catalogue• JOP web service: indicates availability of article in print journal

using data from EZB and ZDB union catalogues• Development & maintenance requires limited manpower if the

data are available.• Study existing discovery tools:• A JOP-like webservice would have to be newly build• For a national link resolver the data are needed from other KB’s;

presently matching these KB data is problematic• All have integration with union catalogues (WorldCat, SUDOC)

(=indirect way to access print full text)• Google Scholar is creating a sort of KB of its own by asking

publishers to provide holdings data (after permission consortia)

What did we learn from others?

Connectors to institutional OPACs

• FINNA: using VUFind – strives to replace local frontends• Discovery tools by library system providers: mechanisms in

place to connect more or less all OPACs and to replace OPACs as front-end for many library systems

• Google Scholar: no direct connections (only via Union Catalogues – SUDOC and WorldCat)

What are we going to do?

Conclusions

1. Building a new, national webscale discovery service for France is not feasible because of efforts re central index

2. Enriched metadata of selections of scholarly literature by Metadata Hub to can be incorporated in indexes of existing webscale discovery services by match & merge

3. A national locator service will enhance access:• For HE libraries with local link resolver: • use the national locator service as a target for their local link

resolver• use the knowledgebase data from the national locator service

for their own local link resolver. • For HE libraries without local link resolver:• Can integrate the national link resolver in any database they

subscribe to.• For HE end-users using free search engines such as Google Scholar,

Microsoft Academic Search, Scirus and PubMed

What are we going to do: Roadmap to improve discovery

1. Development of Metadata Hub to enrich:• Metadata of national licences• Metadata of selections of French scholarly literature

2. Development of a national locator service, including a national knowledgebase

3. Active approach by ABES to integrate enriched metadata and the national locator service in existing discovery services

4. Using the collaborative mechanisms for the national knowledgebase as first step towards shared ILS in the cloud

Metadata Hub

• Aggregation of metadata of selections of the scholarly literature:• F.e. national licences, scholarly publications by French publishers.• Selection criteria: (1) important to the French HE community (2)

neglected by other parties enriching metadata • Analysis, cleaning and enrichment of those metadata:• Diagnose vital problems and inform the primary publisher• Generate out of articles the journal holdings in order to identify gaps • Adding English-language and French-language descriptors • Adding international and/or national authority data; adding links

• Redistribution:• In various formats such as marc21, rdf, json• By data dumps for harvesting, by web services and by linked data

• Technical aspects of Metadata Hub:• RDF as common data model; using Virtuoso, OpenRefine and SILK

National Locator & Knowledgebase

• National Locator service: link resolver for e-content and webservice for p-content

• National Knowledgebase:• Examples:• Knowledge Base + (Jisc) and EZB union catalogue for national

collaboration• GOKb for international collaboration & data exchange

• Two purposes: • To be used in local ERM systems of HE libraries (time-saving

and higher quality for individual libraries)• To be used for national link resolver (improving the discovery

experience of French HE end-users)

Metadata Hub:Will improve discoverability of relevant sections of literature

Metadata Hub:Will improve quality of National Knowledgebase

National Knowledgebase can be seen asextension of SUDOC

National Knowledgebase: first collaborative step towards shared ILS in the cloud

ISTEX: national licenses better discoverable because metadata enriched by Metadata Hub

ISTEX: Better delivery because data included national KB and locator service

2016/17: clear perspective on further migration to the cloud of other components of the national library infrastructure

The ABES Discovery studyreports

• The ABES Discovery Study – main report• Appendix A: Exploration of the do-it-yourself scenario• Appendix B: Exploration of the existing webscale discovery

services Primo, ED, Summon, WordCat Local and Google Scholar

• Appendix C: Comparison interface requirements of VUFind, Primo, ED, Summon, WordCat Local and Google Scholar

• To be downloaded at: http://fil.abes.fr/2013/03/29/etudes-sgbm-et-dispositif-de-decouverte-publiees/

Towards a better discovery of scholarly literature

for the French HE community