Endeca: a faceted search solution for the library catalog

1
Endeca a faceted search solution for the
library catalog

• Kristin Antelman Emily Lynema
• UNC University Library Advisory Council
• June 15, 2006

2
Overview

• Why did we do this?

• What is Endeca?

• NCSU investment

• Working with a non-library vendor

• Assessing the results

3
Some user reaction

• The new Endeca system is incredible. It would be
  difficult to exaggerate how much better it is
  than our old online card catalog (and therefore
  that of most other universities). I've found
  myself searching the catalog just for fun,
  whereas before it was a chore to find what I
  needed.
• - NCSU Undergrad, Statistics
• The new library catalog search features are a
  big improvement over the old system. Not only is
  the search extremely fast, but seemingly it's
  much more intelligent as well.
• - NCSU faculty, Psychology

4
Why did we do this?

• Existing catalogs are hard to use
• known item searching works pretty well, but
• users often do keyword searching on topics and
  get large result sets returned in system sort
  order
• catalogs are unforgiving on spelling errors,
  stemming

5
Catalog value is buried

• Subject headings are not leveraged in searching
• they should be browsed or linked from, not
  searched
• Data from the item record is not leveraged
• should be able to filter by item type, location,
  circulation status, popularity

6
How does Endeca work?

• Endeca Information Access Platform co-exists with
  SirsiDynix Unicorn ILS and Web2 online catalog
• Endeca indexes MARC records exported from Unicorn
• Index is refreshed nightly with records
  added/updated during previous day

7
Endeca IAP overview
Endeca Information Access Platform
NCSU exports and reformats
Data Foundry
MDEX Engine
Parse text files
Raw MARC data
Indices
Flat text files
HTTP
HTTP
NCSU Web Application
Client browser
8
Quick demo

• http//catalog.lib.ncsu.edu

9
Implementation team

• Information Technology (4)
• Team chair and project manager IT department
  head
• Technical lead - Java-trained librarian
• ILS Librarian managing data extracts
• Technical manager determining appropriate
  technologies
• Research and Information Services (1)
• Reference librarian experience with public
  services and OPAC problems
• Metadata and Cataloging (1)
• Cataloging librarian identifying data for
  indexing and display fixing backend data
  problems
• Digital Library Initiatives (1)
• Interface development mockups, usability, beta
  testing
• Team met weekly during implementation (total of
  40-60 hours)

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Implementation timeline

• License / negotiation Spring 2005
• Acquire Summer 2005
• Implementation
• August 2005 vendor training
• September 2005 finalize requirements
• October 2005 January 2006 design and
  development
• January 12, 2006 go-live date
• It doesnt have to be perfect!

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Ongoing investments

• Little ongoing work required for maintenance once
  application is deployed
• Infrequent data refreshing from ILS
• Version upgrades
• 6 member product team meets bi-weekly
• Lots of development ideas (as time / library
  priorities afford)!
• Saving time previously invested in Web2 OPAC
  enhancement

12
MarcAdapter a case study

• NCSU implementation required local program to
  transform MARC data for Endeca
• Endeca staff recognized effort required to
  duplicate this process at each library, and
• Quickly created a MarcAdapter plugin for raw MARC
  data
• Ability to create local field mappings and
  special case handlers
• Eliminate need for external MARC 21 translation
  and file merging

13
Basic statistics (March May 2006)
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Navigation statistics (March May 2006)
15
Navigation statistics (March May 2006)
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Sorting statistics (March May 2006)
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Other interesting tidbits (March 2006)

• Authority searching decreased 45
• Keyword searching increased 230
• Caveat default catalog search changed from title
  authority to keyword
• 5 of keyword searches offered spelling
  correction or suggestion
• 3.1 - automatic spell correction
• 2.3 - Did you mean suggestion

18
Usability testing

• 10 undergraduate students
• 5 with Endeca catalog
• 5 with old Web2 OPAC
• Endeca performed as well as OPAC for known-item
  searching in usability test
• 89 Endeca tasks completed easily (8/9)
• 71 OPAC tasks completed easily (15/21)
• Endeca performed better than OPAC for topical
  searching in usability test.

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Topical searching tasks
20
Average topical task duration
21
A relevance study

• Are search results in Endeca more likely to be
  relevant to a users query than search results in
  Web2 OPAC?
• 100 topical user searches from 1 month in fall
  2005
• How many of top 5 results relevant?
• 40 relevant in Web2 OPAC
• 68 relevant in Endeca catalog

22
Future plans

• FRBR-ized displays

• FAST (Faceted Access to Subject Terms) instead of
  LCSH

• Enrich records with supplemental Web Services
  content more usable TOCs, book reviews, etc.

• More integration with website search

• Use Endeca to index local collections

23
Thanks

• http//www.lib.ncsu.edu/endeca
• Emily Lynema, Systems Librarian for Digital
  Projects
• emily_lynema_at_ncsu.edu