Discovery tools: a rearguard action?

University library

Discovery tools: a rearguard action?Lukas KosterLibrary Systems CoordinatorLibrary of the University of Amsterdam@lukask – [email protected], Palma de Mallorca, May 18, 2012

May 18, 2012 Discovery tools: a rearguard action? ELAG2012 2

YES


Disclaimer

It’s just me


Discovery?

Columbus discovers America


Determine the existence, presence, or fact of something

Discover!

Become aware of something, usually accidentally, find unexpectedly

Make a new finding, see for the first time

Serendipity

http://www.flickr.com/photos/monkeymyshkin/2331128659/

http://freedictionary.org/?Query=discover

The Free Dictionary:

“The things that we know, but are unaware of knowing”

Slavoj Žižek


Unknown unknowns“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.”

Donald Rumsfeld, February 12, 2002 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns

Unknown knowns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown_known

Things we could have known, but don’t know Things that others know, but we don’t know (Lukas Koster)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtkUO8NpI84http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiPe1OiKQuk


http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22116/22116-h/22116-h.htm

Columbus was looking for:NOT Indiaa new route to India

He found:A ‘new’ continentBecame aware only laterNamed after someone else!

Continent was NOT new:As old as EuropeKnown to inhabitantsFound before by Chinese, Vikings, Turks,….

known knownknown unknown

unknown unknown

unknown known


Discovery is relative

Context is important

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

https://sites.google.com/site/urd2comparison

Product Vendor Open Source

Software + local index

Shared index Software + Shared index

Local Hosted API

Primo/Primo Central Ex Libris x (Primo) x (Primo Central) x x x x

WorldCat Local OCLC x x x

Summon SerialsSolutions x x x

Aquabrowser SerialsSolutions x x x x

EDS EBSCO x x x

Encore Innovative x x

Endeca Endeca x x ?

VuFind OS x x x

LibHub SemperTool OS/Sub x x x x x

Meresco Seecr OS x x x

eXtensible Catalog OS x x x


Library Discovery Tools


Library Discovery ToolsEx Libris Primo: “is a one-stop solution for the discovery and delivery of local and remote resources, such as books, journal articles, and digital objects.”OCLC WorldCat Local: “delivers single-search-box access to more than 922 million items from your library and the world's library collections. It connects people to all your library's materials—electronic and digital and physical—as well as to the delivery services that get them what they need.”EBSCO EDS: “creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box.” SerialsSolutions SUMMON: “enables a familiar web-searching experience of the full breadth of content found in library collections—from books and videos to e-resources such as articles.”VuFind: “search and browse through all of your library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC to include: Catalog Records, Locally Cached Journals, Digital Library Items, Institutional Repository, Institutional Bibliography, Other Library Collections and Resources ”GoogleScholar: “provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites ”













one-stopdiscoverydeliverysingle-search-boxunified, customized indexaccessingweb-searchingsearchbrowse

booksjournal articlesdigital objectsvideosarticlescatalog recordsjournalsdigital library itemsscholarly literaturethesesabstractscourt opinions

items from your librarythe world's library collectionsall your library's materialsan institution’s information resourcesfull breadth of content found in library collectionsyour library's resourcesinstitutional repositoryinstitutional bibliographyscholarly literatureacademic publishersprofessional societiesonline repositoriesuniversitiesweb sites

End user functionality Content types Content sources



A one-stop single-search-box web based solution for searching, browsing, discovery and delivery of print and digital publications and objects available from library collections, institutional resources and academic publishers, using a unified index

Discovery and Delivery

One-stop

Unified index

Library and institutional resources

Academic publishers


Publications



Library

Systemvendor

Contentprovider

Customer

CreatorPublisherAggregator

Commercial‘Not (so) commercial’Open source

PublicAcademicResearch

Parties involved


ContentLibrary

Catalogues

Institutionalrepositories

Contentprovider

Journals

Databases

Same old content

Nothing new, nothing unexpected here

Institutionaldatabases

Nothing to discover


ContentLibrary

Catalogues


Contentprovider

Journals

DatabasesInstitutionaldatabases“Local” index

“Shared” index

Systemvendor

Contract



ContentLibrary

Contentprovider

Journals

Databases

“Shared” index

Systemvendor

Contract

Systemvendor


Libraries think they buy access to articles and information

Publishers only sell them services

Library

Publisher

...can you really see us renewing the subscription for this database?http://www.daveyp.com/blog/archives/1722

Dave Pattern

Content discovery?

Same content types as before: publications

Less content: technical, political, commercial obstacles

Known knowns

Unknown knowns

Same content sources as before: catalogues, databases, journals


Known unknowns

Discovery?

No new, unexpected, accidental findings

No discovery

Except that libraries discover:

There are lots of errors in their own data

Their workflows are not fit for unified indexing

Publishers don’t care about libraries, science, knowledge


New silos

Primo 1

Super silos

Local silos

Primo 2

Primo Central Summon Index

Summon 1 Summon 2


End user functionality


Subject/discipline searchScoped search

Refine search resultsDrill downFacets

One unified front end

Before the search After the search

Setting context

Known item search


Book, article

Search on Title , Title + Author

Known known

Known unknown

I know the book is in the library

I know the article, but not where it’s available

No discovery desired!

Unknown known?



Subject/discipline search


Requires uniform classification by subject of each item

In Local and Shared index

Problematic

Not widely available

Highly desired by subject librarians!

Discovery: find new stuff within subject area


Scoping searches to disciplines mapped to the individual item level




The reality is:

One to one topics from data source “as is”


Scoped search

Catalogues


Journals

DatabasesInstitutionaldatabases

“Local” index“Shared” index


Limit search context in advance

Local or Shared index

Locations

Collections




Broad search


Default: search ‘everything’

No limit of search context in advance

No tabs, no locations, no collections prefilter

Limit results afterwards

Drill down

Facets

Largest chance of finding something unexpected



Related information


Find related results while browsing results list

Books and articles are a huge obstacle to find related information. You actually have to read them to find pointers to other useful information sources.

By same authorFrom same periodAbout similar subjects

Unknown unknownsUnknown knowns

Related information


Recommender systems

Based on analysing usage statisticsLoansDownloads





All individual library search front ends replaced by one institutional front end



The Library as the place to find all you need

Focus on

Local Collections, subscriptions

Introverted perspective

Integration = isolation



Institutional affiliation is only needed for delivery….

Customers don’t care where they find stuff

The Model


Dave Pattern http://www.daveyp.com/blog/archives/1722

Slide from Tony Hirst's "A105 - Visionary Views" session at ILI2010

50Discovery tools: a rearguard action? ELAG2012May 18, 2012Bruce Heterick http://www.casalini.it/retreat/2012_docs/heterick.pdf

What’s new?


Response time: fast

Unlimited search scope (within limited set)

What’s old?


No unified multilingual subject search

No unified unambiguous author search

Limited set

?May 18, 2012 Discovery tools: a rearguard action? ELAG2012 53

Time for the Big Question


Bibliotekssystem som begrepp - är det yesterday’s news?

• Är det t.o.m så att det börjar bli dags (på riktigt) att luckra upp innehållet i våra isolerade bibliotekssystem (på riktigt) och låta vår data interagera med omvärldens data (på riktigt)?

” The Big Question here is: do we need discovery systems based on centuries old physical library and publishing practices?

Or do libraries need to really go and look elsewhere and make use of new online information sources and linked open data technology?

[Lukas Koster]

Kristin Olofsson, March 27 2012Kristin Olofsson, March 27 2012 http://www.kb.se/dokument/Libris/inspirationsnm%C3%B6ten/Front%20till%20librisinsp.pdfhttp://www.kb.se/dokument/Libris/inspirationsnm%C3%B6ten/Front%20till%20librisinsp.pdf

May 18, 2012 Discovery tools: a rearguard action? ELAG2012 55May 18, 2012 Discovery tools: a rearguard action? ELAG2012 55


Rearguard action?

Rückzugsgefecht

combat d’arrière-garde

reträttstrid azione di retroguardia

achterhoedegevecht

accion de retaguardia baktroppen handling

týlovou akci


Rearguard action:

rearguard [‘rɪə,gɑːd]n1. (Military) a detachment detailed to protect the rear of a military formation, esp in retreat2. an entrenched or conservative element, as in a political partyrearguard actiona. an action fought by a rearguardb. a defensive action undertaken to try to stop something happening or continuing

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rearguard

The Free Dictionary:

Rearguard actions


Content providers

Libraries

System vendors

Customers


Rearguard actions


Content providers, publishers, aggregators

Protect commercial position

Business model based on 19th century conditions

Peer review

Rearguard actions


Libraries

Promote local physical collection

Protect organisational position

Focused on publications

Rearguard actions


Library system vendors

Protect commercial position

Dependent on content providers and libraries

Rearguard actions


Customers

Conditioned by existing situation

Publications: go to the library

Anything else: go to Google, YouTube, FaceBook


Open acces

Nanopublications

Web

Linked open data

Social media

CollaboratoriesDatasets

Libraries PublishersVendors Information

Rearguard actions

New Bibliographic Framework

Customer

Forward!


The Web…the Final Frontier…To explore strange new worlds…To boldly go where no one has gone before

Unknown unknowns


May 18, 2012 Discovery tools: a rearguard action? ELAG2012 66May 18, 2012 Discovery tools: a rearguard action? ELAG2012 66

Examples!New Bibliographic Framework

Webscale Next Generation ILS

Research information

Discovery tools: a rearguard action? ELAG2012http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/framework-103111.html

May 18, 2012 67


No local data sources for bibliographic data

Discovery tools: a rearguard action? ELAG2012 68


May 18, 2012

Primo 1Primo 2

Summon 1Summon 2

Discovery tools need to work with shared linked data sources





Same old business modelSame old contentSame old silo structure

Shared cataloguing (new??)

Integration of print and electronic

New technical infrastructure

Back office workflows

Same old silos

Primo 1

Super silos

Local silos

Primo 2

Alma Intota

Summon 1 Summon 2




Should be focusing on new Bibliographic Framework



Research project

Publication

Person

Dataset

OrganisationReview

Publication

Person

Discovery tool, OPACDiscovery tool, OPAC Research information systemResearch information system


May 18, 2012 Discovery tools: a rearguard action? ELAG2012 74James Toon @jamestoon http://twitter.com/jamestoon/statuses/195423498649346048


Informal assessment of the need for a discovery tool, January 2012

Assessment Outcomes


Two different use cases:Research staff: one unified interfaceGeneral public: promote KNAW collections

Research staff :Needed: Subject area prefilterOR:Just use Web of Science/Google Scholar, etc.

No real return on investment

No need for organisation-wide discovery tool right now

Solutions


http://www.slideshare.net/wilbanks/wilbanks-nfaisJohn Wilbanks @wilbanks

Solutions


Front end tools:Semantic/linked data searchSearch ‘trusted’ global data sourcesResolve stored URIs on the flyProcess metadata schemas

Infrastructure:Publish Linked Open DataAdd linksUse persistent URIs


Google Knowledge Graph

http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2012/05/introducing-knowledge-graph-things-not.html

No silos

Primo 1 Primo 2

All library data All scholarly publications

Summon 1 Summon 2

? ?



Open up!


Open access, share data

Shift focus to information, curation

Provide general linked Information systems

Publishers

Libraries

System developers/vendors


Real discovery is not a frontend issue, it’s an infrastructure issue

http://www.flickr.com/photos/distillated/4019168148/

Education

Discovery tools: a rearguard action?