Online

06/Dec/2007 Online Information 2007 1

Supporting your libraryusers: OPAC 2.0

lipstick, cowbells and serendipity

Dave Pattern, Library Systems ManagerUniversity of Huddersfield

d.c.pattern@hud.ac.ukhttp://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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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– OCLC’s xISBN1

– LibraryThing’s 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"Did You Mean" - 2006/07 Compared

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Increase in Usage"People Who Borrowed This..." - 2006/07 Compared

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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?– aren’t 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• don’t 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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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?Rate of I ncrease of Feature I mplementation

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Importance (getting soon)Feature I mportance

8.7 8.6 8.4

7.87.4

6.56.1 6.1 6.0

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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!