The Future of the OPAC...?

May 2007 Barcelona - OPAC 2.0 1

The Future of the OPAC...?

lipstick, cowbells and serendipity

Dave Pattern, Library Systems ManagerUniversity of Huddersfield

[email protected]://library.hud.ac.uk/barcelona


Contents• OPAC 1.0 – does your OPAC “suck”?• OPAC 1.? – the Huddersfield

experience• OPAC 1.? – other Libraries• OPAC 2.0 – crystal ball time!

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/


Does Your OPAC “Suck”?


“The OPAC Sucks” Song

The OPAC sucks, that's all I gotta sayYou're outta luck if you can't spell

“Hemingway”...The OPAC sucks, a sad calamityLike it's stuck in 8 million B.C.The title that I seekIs buried very deep

(lyrics by Brian Smith, Chicago Librarian)

http://www.laughinglibrarian.com/2006_11_01_archive.html



“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)

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1673288



K. Schneider - “The User is Not Broken”

• All technologies evolve and die. Every technology you learned about in library school will be dead someday.

• You fear loss of control, but that has already happened. Ride the wave.

• The user is not broken.• Your system is broken until proven otherwise.• It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a

needle than to find a library website that is usable and friendly and provides services rather than talking about them in weird library jargon.

• Meet people where they are – not where you want them to be.

• Stop moaning about the good old days. The card catalog sucked, and you thought so at the time, too.


Quick OPAC Survey• One criticism of OPACs is that they rarely

have cutting edge features (or perhaps even basic 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


Quick OPAC Survey• 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


Quick OPAC Survey• 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


The Huddersfield Experience

• definitely not OPAC 2.0• enhancements to the existing OPAC

(HIP)– 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


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?”)


Spell Checker


Spell Checker

• spell checker based on a common word dictionary or your own holdings?

• spell checker might highlight your cataloguing errors1!

http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/libraries/tballard/typoscomplete.html


Keyword Suggestions

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


Keyword Suggestions


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

http://tim.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining


Borrowing Suggestions


Ratings and Comments


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

http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/xisbn/

http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2006/06/introducing-thingisbn_14.php


Other Editions


RSS Feeds


RSS Aggregators


a9.com (“Stealth OPAC”)


Email Alerts


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)

http://libraryjournal.com/article/CA516027.html


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?


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


“If you build it, will they come?”


Other Libraries

• Ann Arbor District Library• North Carolina State University• Plymouth State University (WPopac)


Ann Arbor District Library

• 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/




North Carolina State University

• facetted browsing• http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/



Plymouth State University• Casey Bisson’s WPopac• OPAC built from popular blogging

software• enriched content from Amazon• tags (user generated?)• related items• user comments and reviews• “trackbacks” (blog equivalent of citations)• http://www.plymouth.edu/library/opac/



Quick OPAC Survey

• quick and informal OPAC survey targeted at librarians and library staff

• received 729 responses from all types of libraries, including– 452 from USA and 46 from Canada– 175 from UK and Ireland– 35 from Australia and New Zealand– 15 others from Europe


“How far in the past do you feel your current OPAC is?”

1519

15

38

46

55

99

46

70

58

99

108

31

25

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

nu

mb

er

of

res

po

nd

en

ts (

tota

l 72

9)


Quick OPAC Survey• Have you ever experienced “OPAC envy”

when looking at someone else’s OPAC?

78% said “yes”

• Do you run any face-to-face training or in(tro)duction courses on "how to use" the OPAC with your users?

64% said “yes”


64% of us offer OPAC training

• “I wish I had known that the solution for needing to teach our users how to search our catalog was to create a system that didn't need to be taught.

While we were focused on crafting integrated library systems that served our needs, our users got left behind. Is it any wonder that they can't understand why our systems aren't as easy to work with as Amazon?”

(Roy Tennant, Library Journal)

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6282632.html


OPAC 2.0?OPAC 2.0?


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”)


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


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)– RSS feeds and OpenSearch


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 6.1– personalised suggestions (e.g. like Amazon) 6.0– user added ratings for items 5.7


Implementation of Features

0

100

200

300

400

500

nu

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of

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(to

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9)

0

1

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3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

imp

ort

an

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already got getting soon importance


Features – Future Trends?Rate of I ncrease of Feature I mplementation

72%

130%

28%

137%

311%279%

189%167%

500%

122%

0%

100%

200%

300%

400%

500%

600%

% i

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1

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imp

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% increase in "getting soon" compared to "already got" importance


Technology Adoption Lifecycle


Technology Adoption - Now


Technology Adoption – Q4 07?


Importance (already got)Feature I mportance

8.7 8.6 8.4

7.87.4

6.56.1 6.1 6.0

5.7

8.98.5

9.0

7.8 7.97.6 7.5

6.97.3

6.5

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

imp

ort

an

ce

(o

ut

of

10

)

importance (all) importance (already got)


Importance (getting soon)Feature I mportance

8.7 8.6 8.4

7.87.4

6.56.1 6.1 6.0

5.7

9.18.8 8.8

8.48.9

7.8 8.0

7.4

8.7

7.0

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

imp

ort

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(o

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)

importance (all) importance (already got) importance (getting soon)


Importance – UK respondents

5.9

8.17.9

6.5

7.3

8.6

5.55.9

5.35.7

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

alsoborrowed

did youmean

enriched facets RSS feeds stealthOPAC

usercomments

userlearning

userratings

usertagging

Import

ance

(out

of

10)

rest of World UK


Is the UK lagging behind?

0%

100%

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500%

600%

% i

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% increase in "getting soon" compared to "already got" UK respondents only importance


Academic v Public (all respondents)

0

1

2

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5

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9

10

alsoborrowed

did youmean


usercomments

userlearning

userratings

usertagging

imp

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0)

Academic Public


Academic v Public (SirsiDynix)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

alsoborrowed

did youmean


usercomments

userlearning

user ratings usertagging

Imp

ort

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(o

ut

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10

)

Academic (23) Public (33)


SirsiDynix Academic

0

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5

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8

9

10

alsoborrowed

did youmean


usercomments

userlearning


Imp

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(o

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)

SirsiDynix academic (23) average all academic (148)


SirsiDynix Public

0

1

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5

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9

10

alsoborrowed

did youmean


usercomments

userlearning


Imp

ort

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(o

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10

)

SirsiDynix public (33) average all public (75)


Some Final Quotes

• “The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.”

(Abraham Lincoln)

• “There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.”

(Winston Churchill)

• “Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine.”

(Robert C. Gallagher)


Thank you! Any quick questions?

Economy & Finance

The Future of the OPAC...?