Research Information from Trusted Sources: The RLG Union Catalog and the Web

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Research Information from Trusted Sources The
RLG Union Catalog and the Web

• James Michalko, Research Libraries Group
• October 20, 2001
• Association of Research Libraries
• Collections Access for the 21st Century
  Scholar
• A Forum to Explore the Roles of the Research
  Library

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Beginnings

• From OAI to speculation
• What if we harvest our own data?
• What good is what kind of bibliographic data?
• To whom and in what form?
• From speculation to planning
• Answer the questions by revealing the union
  catalog on the web

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Union Catalog on Web (UCW)

• RLG will provide access to its union catalog in
• the open web environment creating a new
• information service accessible directly by all
• web users. In addition, appropriate information
• from the union catalog will be exposed for
• indexing by general search engines ... Users
• coming to the union catalog will encounter and
• interact with a new information typology
• prepared from the information in the union
• catalog.

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RLG Union Catalog

• Member-built for research, resource sharing, and
  technical services
• Each members record retained for better resource
  sharing with pooled access points
• Multiscript support Chinese, Japanese, Korean
  (CJK), Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew in one database
• Intersystem search and retrieval gateways to
  catalogs in UK, Germany, Australia

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RLG Union Catalog Languages
Italian
Latin
Japanese
Russian
Forty Million Titles (2001)
Chinese
Spanish
French
English
German
All others
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Project Objective

• Reposition bibliographic services in the general
  web environment providing information in the form
  and via the paradigms that have been established
  and are now expected by the general population of
  web users.
• How?
• Emphasize reference and results
• Deliver something closer to what web user expects
• Offer information that is unique on web

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Community Goals

• Facilitate the discovery of deep web scholarly
  materials
• Establish a library presence in the general web
  environment
• Create a destination for discovering resources at
  trusted institutions
• Provide the framework on which communities can
  build an integrated entry point to collections

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Catalog Goals

• Deliver new types of access that rely on
  relationships in the union catalog
• Provide services such as purchase or subscription
• Improve integrated discovery
• Create a next-generation business model

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UCW Audience

• Satisfy college-level students, lifelong
  learners, and enthusiasts - not professionals
• Characteristics
• impatient, casual
• search habits learned elsewhere
• unwilling to read help
• happy to follow paths and advice
• want well-designed overviews

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What do they expect and value?

• The way the web works when they get there
• How?
• Searching
• Ranking (Selection)
• Improving web searches
• Learning more
• Getting their hands on something
• Can a union catalog deliver these?

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UCW Catalog Data Manipulations

• Super-Clusters
• Subject Analysis
• On the same shelf
• Name Recognition
• Relevance Ranking
• Usage Trail and Personalization

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UCW Site Schematic


SELECTION (Results)


BIBLIOGRAPHIC VIEW
DISCOVERY (Search)
Title (of super-cluster) Author(s) Publishers

Specific Title
Title (of super-cluster) Author(s) Publishers
Specific Title


Specific Title
Title (of super-cluster) Author(s) Publishers
EXPLORE (Subject browsing and analysis)



Title (of super-cluster) Author(s) Publishers
Get It


Learn More
More from Web
Identify locations of libraries Find
E-books Purchase book Find out-of-print
version Borrow this book Check your local
library Find more information Find associated
images

Direct search to

WEB



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What are the implications?

• Relationship to community concerns and new forms
  of information seeking behavior
• How can we involve community of trusted
  information providers?
• What opportunities might this present to deliver
  a presence for this community?
• What might it mean for your specific
  institutional audience?

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Next Steps...

• Finish implementation planning
• Resource dependency issues
• Sustainability questions
• Best case on implementation is?

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UCW Site Schematic


SELECTION (Results)


BIBLIOGRAPHIC VIEW
DISCOVERY (Search)
Title (of super-cluster) Author(s) Publishers

Specific Title
Title (of super-cluster) Author(s) Publishers
Specific Title


Specific Title
Title (of super-cluster) Author(s) Publishers
EXPLORE (Subject browsing and analysis)



Title (of super-cluster) Author(s) Publishers
Get It


Learn More
More from Web
Identify locations of libraries Find
E-books Purchase book Find out-of-print
version Borrow this book Check your local
library Find more information Find associated
images

Direct search to

WEB



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