By Andrew K. Pace
American Libraries Columnist
andrew_pace@ncsu.edu
By Andrew K. Pace
American Libraries Columnist
andrew_pace@ncsu.edu
Head of Systems, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh.
Column for February 2006
A bad ending can easily ruin a good movie. The Wizard of Oz is like that for me. I always wanted Dorothy to reel back on her heels and snarl at Glinda the supposedly good witch: “What do you mean, I’ve had the power to go home all along?! You’re telling me this now?”
Libraries also have lots of powers they don’t know about. I like to call the moment when we finally figure that out “ruby slippering.”
In the real world, Glinda might have been a consultant—the kind who asks for your watch and then tells you what time it is. In the past few years, libraries have frequently relinquished information only to have it repackaged and sold back to them. Online journal lists are a very good example: A library tells one vendor who all its other vendors are, as well as the specifics of individual title subscriptions. The firm that gets all that data then makes a comprehensive list of available journals and sells it back to the library.
I want to be clear that this is not a criticism of the enterprising companies that do the repackaging. They scratched an itch that libraries seemingly could not reach, and it is mostly the repackaging these firms are charging for, not their gathering of the data. One has to admire the irony, though, of paying for something our content vendors should have been giving us in the first place.
Sometimes, libraries find that they had the power all along only after the ruby slippers are on the feet of the vendor. Even the company itself sometimes takes time to realize it has the power.
For example, OCLC has been building a most amazing pair of ruby slippers for decades. The WorldCat Collection Analysis service allows libraries to use WorldCat data to analyze their holdings in new ways, including the age of subject content or title counts by publication date, format, language, and audience level.
In some ways, the OCLC model is following the trend of better statistical gathering by ILS vendors. The interesting twist is that OCLC allows libraries to compare their data to that of peer institutions. Simple output is transformed into overlap reports, unique title reports, and comparisons to other OCLC-built group collections.
Bowker has introduced a similar product: the Bowker Book Analysis System. Encompassing subscription access to BooksInPrint.com and GlobalBooksInPrint.com, the system compares a library’s holdings to the H. W. Wilson Standard Catalogs and provides reports on collection gaps and duplicates. Building better selection tools is a good trend, and one long overlooked by the automation industry.
One of my North Carolina State University colleagues recently sent an e-mail asking the rest of us to think about “hidden collections.” In other words, where are the little pockets of things on- and offline that patrons (and even the librarians) don’t know about? “They’re in the stacks,” was my reply. And they’re hidden because only a little luck (or a librarian with a Boolean utility belt) can help you find them using the online catalog. We have the books and the data about them. If using the data to discover (and uncover) the collection isn’t ruby slippering, I don’t know what is.
Now, I’ve gotten a fair amount of mileage out of complaining about OPACs in this column and the occasional podium-as-bully-pulpit. But, contrary to what a library blogger recently claimed while dubbing me “OPAC Complainer,” my library and several vendors are doing something about it.
Normally, I would not use this column to promote the things my library does, but I’m making an exception: North Carolina State University Libraries has implemented Endeca’s Guided Navigation engine. The software, which was developed so that visitors to commercial websites could access product catalogs and content, is used by companies such as Barnes and Noble, Wal-Mart, KB Toys, and Home Depot. Though NCSU worked directly with Endeca to develop a library application of the software, Guided Navigation is also available from automation vendor TLC, which is implementing it at Phoenix and Chicago public libraries as well.
It’s hard to explain and easier to show. But basically, Endeca exposes library data in a completely new way. Guided Navigation not only improves performance by providing several relevance-ranking algorithms, but it also allows patrons to refine searches by presenting facets from the metadata found in result sets. For example, NCSU chose to break up subject headings into separate facets—topical subject, time period, region, and genre. Patrons can limit results to available items and sort them by call number or most frequently circulated. The collection and the MARC data (exported to be indexed by the new engine) are the same. We had the power all along.
Other TLC and VTLS libraries have implemented a similar solution with AquaBrowser Library from Medialab Solutions. AquaBrowser adds a “word cloud” component for a new kind of catalog experience. Vendors are following the trend. Innovative Interfaces has released WebPAC Pro (see Announcements below), SirsiDynix has invested a lot in its new Sirsi Enterpise Portal, OCLC continues to enhance WorldCat, and Ex Libris has begun talking about Primo, a new interface to varied content (more on that next month).
It’s nice to think that we have special powers, even though it’s alarming to realize that we’ve had them all along. Library automation vendors, even those new to the field, will continue to enhance those powers and even repackage them. Just click your heels together three times.