Making the catalogue a good place to be lipstick, cowbells and serendipity

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Making the catalogue a good place to
belipstick, cowbells and serendipity

• Dave Pattern, Library Systems ManagerUniversity
  of Huddersfield
• d.c.pattern_at_hud.ac.uk
• http//slideshare.net/daveyp

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Contents

• does your OPAC suck?
• OPAC survey findings
• experiences at Huddersfield
• other libraries
• OPAC 2.0
• further OPAC survey findings
• Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share
  Alike 3.0 License
• http//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

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Does Your OPAC Suck?
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More Cowbell huh?
Used to express that something is deeply lacking
oomph... to express that something is far from
perfect, needs repair, fixing, rectifying.
(everything2.com)
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The OPAC as a Pig

• After all, you can put lipstick on a pig, but
  it's still very much a pig. (Roy Tennant
  discussing the OPAC, Library Journal,
  2005)
• Never try to teach a pig to sing it wastes your
  time and it annoys the pig.
  (attrib. Robert Heinlein, author)

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Pig Ugly?
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Kissy, Kissy?
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OPAC Survey (2007)

• On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is extremely
  unhappy and 10 is extremely happy), how happy are
  you with your OPAC?
• 5.1
• ?

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OPAC Survey (2007)

• One criticism of OPACs is that they rarely have
  cutting edge features that our users expect from
  a modern web site.
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you think
  your OPAC meets the needs and expectations of
  your users?
• 4.5

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OPAC Survey (2007)

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easy do you think one
  of your average users finds your OPAC is to use?
• 4.6
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how important do you think
  it is that an OPAC is easy intuitive to use?
• 9.2

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Experiences at Huddersfield

• definitely not OPAC 2.0
• enhancements to the existing OPAC
• user suggestions from surveys
• 2.0 inspired features
• borrowing good ideas from other web sites
• new features launched with no/low publicity
• perpetual beta
• required staff buy-in and a willingness to
  experiment and take risks

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Spell Checker

• we monitored keyword searches over a six month
  period and discovered approx 23 of searches gave
  zero results
• most OPACs present the user with a dead end
  page
• a good search engine should still give the user
  options on a failed search (did you mean?)

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Spell Checker
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Keyword Suggestions

• failed keyword searches are cross referenced with
  www.answers.com to provide new search suggestions

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Keyword Suggestions
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Borrowing Suggestions

• we had details of over 2,000,000 CKOs spanning 10
  years stored in the library management system and
  gathering virtual dust
• Web 2.0 Data is the Next Intel Inside1
• historic circulation data can be mined2 to
  uncover the hidden trends and links between
  potentially disparate library items

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Borrowing Suggestions
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Ratings and Comments
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Other Editions

• uses FRBR-y web services provided by OCLC and
  LibraryThing to locate other editions and related
  works within local holdings
• OCLCs xISBN1
• LibraryThings thingISBN2

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Other Editions
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Email Alerts
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RSS feeds
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If you build it, will they come?
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Increase in Usage
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Increase in Usage
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Lipstick on the Pig

• We need to focus more energy on important,
  systemic changes rather than cosmetic ones. If
  your system is more difficult to search and less
  effective than Amazon.com, then you have work to
  do.
• After all, you can put lipstick on a pig, but
  it's still very much a pig.
  (Roy Tennant, Library Journal, 2005)

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Problems ...Challenges!

• there was no formal process for discussing and
  agreeing new OPAC features
• so we organised a web/library 2.0 afternoon for
  staff
• some initial scepticism from staff
• would users think borrowing suggestions were
  formal recommendations from the library?
• arent borrowing suggestions just for selling
  books?
• how relevant will the suggestions be?
• would sudden changes confuse users?

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Solutions

• encourage suggestions from staff
• include users in decision making process
• encourage play and experimentation
• dont be afraid to make mistakes!
• look widely for ideas
• build crappy prototypes fast
• monitor usage
• if usage is poor then remove it

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Searching for books by colour
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Search visualisations
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Search visualisations
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CKO visualisations
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Other Libraries

• Ann Arbor District Library
• North Carolina State University (Endeca)
• LibraryThing for Libraries
• Open Source OPACs

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Ann Arbor District Library

• early adopter of 2.0 (John Blyberg)
• OPAC deeply embedded in Library portal
• virtual catalogue cards (with graffiti!)
• user tagging, ratings, and reviews
• borrowing suggestions
• RSS feeds
• http//www.aadl.org/catalog/

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North Carolina State University

• facetted browsing
• http//www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/
• http//endeca.com

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LibraryThing for Libraries

• integrates LibraryThing data into the OPAC
• tags
• borrowing suggestions
• other editions
• www.librarything.com/forlibraries/

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Open Source OPACs

• Scriblio (formerly WPOpac)
• uses WordPress (blogging software)
• VuFind
• uses PHP MySQL
• Lucene Solr
• Project Backlight (Univ. of Virginia)
• FacBackOPAC
• Huddersfield (blog post)

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The Traditional Vendors

• Talis Platform
• an environment for building next generation
  applications and services
• Ex Libris Primo
• one-stop solution for the discovery and delivery
  of local and remote resources
• Innovative Interfaces Encore
• goes beyond the online-catalog model to provide
  a better patron experience

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OPAC 2.0

• The best way to predict the future is to invent
  it.
• (Alan Kay, computer scientist and former Xerox
  PARC researcher)
• The future is here. It's just not widely
  distributed yet.
• (William Gibson, science fiction authorand
  creator of the word cyberspace)

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OPAC 2.0

• shopping list of features
• spell checking (did you mean?)
• relevancy ranking, search refining, and facets
• manual recommendations (best bets)
• automated suggestions (based on both global and
  user-specific data)
• user participation (read-write OPAC)
• foster communities of interest

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OPAC 2.0

• shopping list of features
• improve serendipity
• expose hidden links between items
• APIs and Web Services to expose data
• promote unintended uses
• user personalisation
• embed external data (e.g. Wikipedia,
  LibraryThing)
• RSS feeds and OpenSearch

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Quick OPAC Survey Features

• Please rate how important you feel the following
  features are to your users in a modern OPAC.
• embedding the OPAC in external sites (e.g.
  portals) 8.7
• did you mean spelling suggestions 8.6
• enriched content (book covers, ToCs, etc) 8.4
• RSS feeds (e.g. new books, searches, etc) 7.8
• facetted browsing (e.g. like NCSU Library) 7.4
• people who borrowed this suggestions 6.5
• user tagging of items (i.e. folksonomy) 6.1
• user added comments and reviews 6.0
• personalised suggestions (e.g. like Amazon) 5.9
• user added ratings for items 5.7

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Implementation of Features
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Features Future Trends?
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Importance (getting soon)
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Technology Adoption Lifecycle
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Technology Adoption - Now
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Technology Adoption Q1 08?
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Importance UK respondents
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Thank you!