A Future for the Library Catalogue

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A Future for the Library Catalogue

• T. Hickey
• ACRL/DVC
• Bryn Mawr
• 3 November 2006

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OCLC Research

• Research for both
• OCLC services
• Membership
• Metadata management
• Knowledge organization
• Content management
• Interoperability
• Systems interaction design
• 30 employees

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Reports

• Melvyl Recommender Project (CDL)
• http//www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/melvyl_recomm
  ender/report_docs/Mellon_final.pdf
• Changing Nature of the Catalog and its
  Integration
• http//www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf
  
• Future of Cataloging at Indiana University
• http//www.iub.edu/libtserv/pub/Future_of_Catalog
  ing_White_Paper.pdf
• Martha Yee Beyond the OPAC future directions
  for web-based catalogues
• http//www.nla.gov.au/lis/stndrds/grps/acoc/papers
  2006.html

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Influences

• FRBR
• Faceting
• Google, Yahoo, etc.
• Digital content
• Ranking
• Consortia
• Connectivity
• Remote users

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Basic Approach

• Go to the users
• Bring data to the user
• Make it as inviting as possible
• Invite their participation
• Use the data we have
• Classification
• Controlled vocabularies
• Controlled names
• FRBR
• Usage data

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OCLCs Role

• Largest consortia, largest catalog
• 72 million records, growing at 12 million/year
• 1.1 billion holdings
• http//www.oclc.org/worldcat/grow.htm
• Open WorldCat
• Relationships with Web indexers
• Authority control
• Data mining

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General Observations

• Grouping and ranking are critical
• Simpler is better
• Faster is better
• Faceting needs to be visible
• Authority control is important
• Local is not as important as it was

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OCLC Research

• Data mining
• WorldCat Identities
• Audience level
• Authority control
• VIAF
• Heading control
• FRBR
• Algorithm
• xISBN
• Live search
• FictionFinder

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WorldCat Identities

• Create a page for each person in WorldCat
• Name(s)
• Works by and about
• Subjects
• Dates
• Fiction/non-fiction
• Roles
• Co-authors
• Add links
• Wikipedia
• Authority files

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Approach

• Borrow from
• FictionFinder
• RedLightGreen
• FRBR
• VIAF
• PeopleAustralia
• Wikipedia
• Pages are static
• Easier to do complicated analysis
• Some parts may be editable
• Use cover art in lieu of photos

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Statistics

• 80 million (nominally) controlled headings
• 18 million different identities in WorldCat
• 2 million with at least five citations
• 12 million with only one citation
• 400,000 identities with non-Latin script forms

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Plans, etc.

• Make WorldCat Identities public this year
• Revised version of FictionFinder soon
• Improve authority control
• Extend authority control
• Improve FRBR matching

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Do We Need It?

• Just have Google harvest everything
• Our experience with Google
• Fielded searching
• Reliable searching
• Possibility of user-supplied metadata
• Cost of good metadata
• Cost of non-existent metadata

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Conclusions

• Shift to remote users forces new approaches
• Online availability trend towards
  centralization
• More flexibility in implementations
• Patrons are better served
• Less emphasis on physical collections

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Thom Hickey
hickey_at_oclc.org