The MALIBU Search Engine: Exploring User Needs in a Hybrid World

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The MALIBU Search Engine Exploring User Needs in
a Hybrid World

• Jessie M.N. Hey
• Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
• Project MALIBU University of Southampton
  Libraries
• jmnh_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
• The Future is Hybrid
• British Library 1/11/2000

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Focus of workshop

• Searching the hybrid library
• Developing the MALIBU search engine (GIGA)
• An example
• Towards our vision
• With Valeda Dent (KCL project manager) and
  Michael Cave (Oxford technical officer)

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Creating the hybrid library

• To bring together a wide range of new alternative
  technologies plus the electronic products and
  services already in libraries, and the historical
  functions of our local, physical libraries, into
  well organised, accessible hybrid libraries (JISC
  circular 3/97)

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Recent hybrid library statistics!

• Two extremes
• Southampton libraries have 42,752m of shelving,
  of which 35,300m or 83 were occupied at the time
  of the measure. This is roughly equivalent to the
  distance from Southampton to Portsmouth.
• Southampton IAM group prints 10,000 pages every
  3.5 weeks searching the web, using up a laser
  printer toner cartridge

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Music resources room example

• Bringing CDs from department to new Electronic
  Information Services Wing for greater
  organisation
• Videos, tapes and CDs and equipment
• Close to music books and scores
• Exploring more efficient ways of delivering eg
  digitization experiments (with IAM group and
  archives) of Norman del Mar sound archive
• Storing on IAM group 200GB server
• Student project exploring bandwidth issues
• Exploring integrating CD listening with digital
  working

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What needs adding?

• Survey showed demand for more integrated access
  to relevant resources
• To search out web based resources as well as
  traditional catalogues
• A prime candidate for experimenting with our
  MALIBU search engine

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Questionnaires to Humanities Staff

• All kind of resources used e.g.
• E-journals, abstracts and microforms
• Radio and online newspapers
• Card catalogues and archives
• Librarians and students
• General and very specialised web resources

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MALIBU search engine

• Developed from preprototype search engine for the
  Humanities supported by user and librarian
  testing and reviews of searching methods for
  paper and digital resources, both local and
  remote
• Modelling the hybrid library Project MALIBU
• JMN Hey and A Wissenburg The New Review of
  Information and Library Research 1998 103-110

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Search Agent Objectives

• To expand horizons for Humanities staff and
  students in a managed hybrid library environment
• Both to search relevant web based resources in
  addition to traditional catalogues
• And archives and other hidden databases in
  addition to the web
• To develop a prototype providing searching
  facilities across a selected no. of heterogeneous
  priority targets

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A Global Information Gathering Agent

• Consists of a series of independent agents, which
  can communicate through a meta-agent
• Aim - flexible and efficient system
• Degree of user profiling matching users at
  Oxford, Southampton and KCL
• Options to change targets searched and to work
  with results

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GIGA

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An introductory profile is set up but can be
amended
Malibu's Search Agent Signup
Welcome! Please provide the following
information about yourself. This information will
help the system to set up a personal user profile
for you.
Please click on "Submit" (below) when you are
finished entering your information, or "Clear" to
start again.
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A Personal Profile eg in History might include

• Book catalogues (Southampton and COPAC)
• JSTOR history and American journals
• Papers of Palmerston and Wellington (at
  Southampton)
• Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (at
  Kings College, London)
• Refugee studies Catalogue (at Oxford)
• Survey of Jewish Archives (at Southampton)
• Google search engine
• Wifred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive

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The next stage of exploration

• The Southampton Reserve Collection has some 1st
  World War materials and some were digitized for a
  previous project in English and posted to a local
  site
• We want to look further afield
• Southamptons WebCat
• JSTOR digitized History journals
• Perhaps other catalogues and archives
• A web search engine and different media

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Amend profile to search relevant databases

• Southampton WebCat
• Oxfords OLIS catalogue
• COPAC (The union catalogue of the Consortium of
  University Research Libraries. Free bibliographic
  information on over 6 million titles)
• Google search engine
• JSTOR history journals
• Papers of Senior UK Defence Personnel (catalogue
  launched in Southampton June 2000)
• Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive
• Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (at
  Kings College, London)
• And rank by priority

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Researching the 1st world war trenches

• Some marked records from a Southampton GIGA
  search (saved or emailed)
• Wilfred Owen Archive at Oxford
• Audio of daily routine in front line trenches
• Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archive (KCL)
• Sketches showing layout of trenches
• Google Search Engine
• Trenches on the Web reference library
• Oxford OLIS Catalogue
• Lads love poetry of the trenches compiled 1998
• Southampton catalogue
• In the trenches of Stalingrad pub. 1948
• NB No matches in JSTOR journals or Southampton
  online archives this time

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Following on

• The Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive looks
  useful so click on the information button
• What does it comprise?
• Virtually all of Owens original MSS for his war
  poetry, from various sources
• 18 issues of The Hydra
• 20 Photos of Owen
• A selection of letters Owen wrote during his war
  service
• Official records related to Owen from PRO
• Selection of general material from war (photos,
  audio, video), from IWM archives
• Relevant current day video photographic
  material
• Other contemporary material (e.g. postcards)

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Exploring in depth

• Explore a few resources
• ahew4 Audio of Smell of trenches. by L. J. Hewitt
• amci1 Audio of Trench life. Shaving and washing
  by T. W. McIndoe
• aoxl12 Audio of Daily routine in front line
  trenches. St by H. Oxley
• aoxl18 Audio of Sanitary arrangements in
  trenches. by H. Oxley
• aoxl5 Audio of Journey to front line at Ypres
  Salient, by H. Oxley
• Link to the database for more detailed context
  based searching
• http//www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/

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And from our web search engineAn Internet
History of the Great Warhttp//www.worldwar1.com

• one of the best online resources for teaching
  and learning about the First World War."Scout
  Report for Social Sciences8-Nov-1997

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A useful exemplar

• Currently investigating the impact of the search
  engine and its place within the users and
  librarys information landscape
• Analysing advantages and disadvantages of
  technical model
• Some conclusions
• Can allow for easy distributed development
• But may need to accept less than full features
  use as a pointer
• Major challenge of database subscriptions and
  features not remaining constant

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Vision to plug in new agents as databases
become available or in demand

• eg free Eprints software just being made
  available from our IAM group to institutions and
  departments to self archive scholarly research
  literature (modelled on Los Alamos preprint
  archive)
• Could then add a database to search very recent
  work as well as traditionally published work
  together

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The ideas of GIGA look forward to

• Having your own intelligent agent (your virtual
  hybrarian) to exploit to the full well
  organised and accessible libraries
• Whether far afield or on your doorstep
• Recent tests have shown users are enthusiastic to
  discover new resources and recommend new
  resources for inclusion

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The MALIBU Search Engine Exploring User Needs in
a Hybrid World

• Be our guest at http//www.kcl.ac.uk/malibu
• Jessie M.N. Hey
• Project MALIBU University of Southampton
  Libraries
• jmnh_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
• The Future is Hybrid
• British Library 1/11/2000