Discovery Tools Sub-Group

Added by Martha Whitehead, last edited by Kate Davis on May 13, 2008  (view change)

Objectives 2007/08

Broadly, follow up on the MultiSearch Early Adopters' recommendation to continue exploration of federated search tools, and specifically:

  • Examine SFX statistics (and any other relevant data): what do they tell us about how users reach full-text. (Valerie)
  • Federated search discovery exercise: what's out there? (Jim)
  • Illumina, GoogleScholar, etc - how do various discovery tools compare? (Stacy)
  • Clarifying Illumina issues (e.g. discrepancies with content in native platform) for OCUL staff and general 'quality management' (Kate)
  • Liaise with OCUL-IR re Illumina content lacking in specific disciplines (Martha)
  • User assessment (Martha)

Members

  • Stacy Allison-Cassin, York
  • Jim Brett, Guelph
  • Valerie Critchley, Ottawa
  • Kate Davis, SPOT
  • Martha Whitehead, Queen's (Lead)
  • Mita Williams, Windsor

Some background (spring 2007)

One of the reasons for looking at federated search tools, and discovery tools in general, comes from the MultiSearch Early Adopters Group.  After some initial implementations in 2006, none of the early adopter institutions continued with MultiSearch but there was still interest in knowing more about other federated search product options.  On the one hand, Scholars Portal Search may satisfy the desire for a cross-disciplinary search or a discipline-cluster search of A&I databases, but on the other hand Scholars Portal Search doesn't address the desire to include other resources such as library catalogues, digital collections, etc.  For further background, see the Multisearch Final Report.

A year before that MultiSearch discussion, Scholars Portal Search was launched in 2005, on the Illumina platform.  There was a Scholars Portal Search Working Group formed to: solicit feedback from librarians and users on Illumina functionality; conduct research on a 'single search' approach to searching multiple databases; make recommendations to SIR regarding Illumina promotion and instruction.  Though it's been a year and half since that group reported out, it may be useful to review its findings:  Scholars Portal Search Working Group Report, September 27, 2005.

Here's a 'lay of the land' presentation prepared for a staff session at Queen's in June 2007, summarizing the points below: The Discovery Landscape: Recent Past and Near Future

Portage over to Scholars Portage (summer 2007)

In our May 2007 conference call, PSAG talked about the potential offered by MarkLogic and the XML elements of all those ejournals that Scholars Portal archives.  For those of us who have trouble keeping track of what's where, a quick summary:

  • the full-text of the ejournals to which OCUL institutions subscribe was on ScienceServer, and that's now being migrated to MarkLogic
  • ejournals@scholarsportal  is an index database of the above ejournals, which we search on Scholars Portal Search (Illumina)
  • Scholars Portal Search also provides other A&I databases which may link to full-text in the Scholars Portal archive but which also include citations to resources outside the archive.
  • Could/should MarkLogic be used as a platform for A&I content, replacing Illumina?  Perhaps, but it's too early to know.

Our Scholars Portage team has been thinking about the opportunity to create a super-duper interface in MarkLogic -- another discovery tool option. So, our two subgroups are merging on this... see Scholars Portage

Metasearch lay of the land (summer 2007)

There has been so much discussion of federated searching over the years that it seems a bit redundant to give a summary here, but the point is to pull together what various OCUL schools are considering or would like to consider.  But first, librarians can't resist a few references:

  • (Meta)search Like Google by Jonathan Rochkind, Library Journal, 2/15/2007.  Some key lines from this article, to entice you to read it: "If it was clear even in 1999 that cross-searching was inferior to local indexing, why are we still doing it?"  and "Finally, local indexing is the likely future of metasearch in libraries---a metasearch that can be both more powerful and easier to use than what libraries currently have. Both the Ontario Scholars Portal Project and the Alberta Digital Library are large consortial projects that have the resources to start approaching these solutions at the beginning of an adoption curve."  http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6413442.html
  • Spotted on the Dig-Ref list recently: "A forthcoming issue of Internet Reference Services Quarterly (also published as a monograph) deals exclusively with federated search and includes at least a couple of write-ups of usability studies on federated search. http://www.haworthpress.com/store/product.asp?sid=P7MVQF1DGQML8KN4384DHUL98PBCE9L7&sku=6057

Now, some options. Please comment if you have been exploring any of these tools:

AGent Search http://www4.auto-graphics.com/products/agentsearch/agentsearch.htm

Ex Libris's MetaLib http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/metalib.htm  Long considered good and reliable.  It has fewer available resources, but let's compare the list of connectors we set up with MultiSearch with what's available in MetaLib.  MetaLib is employed in Primo.

Ex Libris's Primo http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/primo.htm Several OCUL schools have had demos of Primo and are intrigued with the search environment it offers. It integrates with the catalogue of the ILS as well as other local repositories, and searches remote sources using MetaLib. Those looking for a 'next generation catalogue'  are interested in its features such as faceted browsing, tagging, and suggested new searches.

Explorit   http://www.deepwebtech.com/dexpl.shtml 

Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/  Included here because it's clearly a popular metasearch tool. The author of the Library Journal article cited above says that Google Scholar has become the largest single source of links to his library's link resolver product. A glance at SFX statistics in OCUL institutions shows Google Scholar is up there along with Scholars Portal Search and some others.

Serials Solutions' Central Search http://www.serialssolutions.com/promotion/centralsearch.asp; Our wrap up the CSA MultiSearch early adopters experience coincided with the merger of ProQuest and CSA, and since Serials Solutions was in the ProQuest family we were invited to look at it as an alternative.  A few schools may have looked into it?

Serial Solutions 360 Search
http://www.serialssolutions.com/ss_360_search.html

SirsiDynix Single Search http://www.sirsi.com/Solutions/Prodserv/Products/singlesearch.html  Like MultiSearch, it's based on MuseGlobal, which relies heavily on HTML parsing (screen scraping) for its connectors. Single Search is used by the Atlantic Scholarly Information Network and we've heard from them that they devote about 1 FTE to ensuring that connectors across the consortium keep working.

Vivisimo   http://vivisimo.com/

WebFeat http://www.webfeat.org/products/index.htm;

Next generation discovery environment (summer 2007)

While there's continued interest in metasearch, at least some OCUL schools have also begun exploring 'next generation catalogue' interfaces.  McMaster has already implemented Endeca.  Queen's had a working group begin the process of addressing catalogue interface issues in 2006/07 and wants to implement a product in 2008/09 (see Future of the Library Catalogue Report http://library.queensu.ca/libdocs/futurecat-wg-report.pdf), TUG is thinking about how to approach the question of a new search and discovery interface, Ottawa has had some preliminary vendor demos and discussions, UofT is working on an RFI, and there may be more.  Some of us are considering whether we want to invest in improving our catalogue without also creating a new discovery environment for other resources.

Some known options to explore: 

  • Aquabrowser
  • Bibliocommons
  • Endeca
  • Evergreen
  • Ex Libris Primo
  • Georgia Tech's Communicat
  • LibraryFind
  • University of Rochester eXtensible Catalog (XC) Project
  • University of Virginia's Blacklight Project
  • VuFind
  • XQuery and MarkLogic at Scholars Portal

User Study (early 2008)

 more information on the user study can be found here

At the OCUL Directors' meeting in November 2007 there were discussions about future directions for a 'discovery layer' project for OCUL as a whole.  A clear consensus did not emerge, but it was decided to approve a proposal from the Scholars Portal Operations and Development Committee (provided by PSAG), to conduct a user study to inform Scholars Portal interface decisions.  OCUL user study.doc

On behalf of OCUL, Queen's sought a consultant to assist with the user study, based on this description of the project:  Ontario Scholars Portal User Study

One of the first steps in the study is to review what we think we already know from previous studies.  See The beginning of a reading list

A long list of possible research questions exists, to be refined with the consultant:

  • Broadly: what do our users - faculty, graduate students, undergraduates and other researchers across all disciplines - want from our online research environment?
  • What are the user interests and benefits in a discovery interface that includes the holdings of all OCUL libraries?
  • What are the merits and drawbacks of the one big search (eg all of Scholars Portal ejournals and all OCUL catalogues), and are there other approaches for guiding users to content from a variety of sources?
  • Our users need other resources besides those provided by Scholars Portal. How can we direct them to all the possibilities?  How can we integrate or simplify all the possibilities?
  • What are the similarities and differences between user needs in academic research environments versus popular internet services or commercial websites?  Should we mimic Google or differentiate ourselves? 
  • What are the similarities and differences between different use cases (eg an exhaustive literature search, a novice researching a topic, etc)
  • What are user expectations for the integration of information services into their learning and research environments?  What more do we need to do to support the whole research process? (xml feeds for course management systems, etc.)
  • Additional content on top of ejournal data - What are scholars looking for? Links out to Wikipedia articles? Syndetics?
  • What informs users' decisions about whether to pursue a particular item in a result list? (reviewing table of contents? book jacket? subject headings?)
  • Do users want the opportunity to "buy this book" (eg link to Amazon)?
  • Tagging - What is user motivation for doing it?  Relation to RefWorks - harvest the naming that users apply to folders and add these names to the citations to which they relate?
  • User contributed content - Explore the motivational context and how to encourage high quality contributions.
  • What can we do to facilitate the sharing of citations between users?
  • To what extent should the library be responsible for their users' personal collections of citations?
  • Faceted browsing - what improvements in interface design are needed to increase the use of facets?
  • What are the particular issues of researchers working across institutions ("virtual organizations")
  • How can we support researchers as they work with increasing numbers of collaborators from increasingly far-flung locations and frequently across disciplines?
  • How can academic libraries support the open exchange of research information and support fair and open metrics?
  • Is the academic library's traditional role of knowledge gatekeeper holding back efforts to get into our users' workflow?
  • Should academic libraries develop social networking platforms or work towards integration with existing systems? Or is this a matter that will likely 'blow over' in time?
  • How do we improve our systems and interfaces to account for the fact that users perform simple keyword searches and do not use advanced search functions or Boolean search techniques?
  • What do know about the Discovery Layer?
  • What are other library groups similar to OCUL (OhioLink, COPPUL, JISC) doing in these matters and are there opportunities for collaboration?

March 7/08 Kick-off Meeting with Usability Matters

The Public Services Advisory Group plus several other OCUL folks met with Usability Matters on March 7 to begin the process of developing research questions and methodologies.  Participants were asked to spend a few minutes thinking about their own answers to the question of "what do we want to know" and then we talked about all the ones we could cover within about 90 minutes.  Here's a point-form summary:  What Do We Want to Know?

Usability Matters is now considering the results of this meeting along with existing research, and will be presenting us with a brief report with proposed research objectives and recommendations on methodologies prior to our next meeting on March 20.  We intend to circulate that report to the Scholars Portal list and open the March 20 meeting to anyone who wishes to participate.

March 20/08 Meeting with Usability Matters

OCUL_ResearchReview_Draft for Discussion.doc

Agenda:

  • Introduction to the Research Review, in particular looking at the chosen frameworks rather than the placement of individual questions and sources
  • Identification of the focus for the research
  • Discussion of the Research Recommendations
  • Next steps

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