The Lay of the Land: Libraries at the Crossroads

1. The Lay of the Land: Libraries at the Crossroads Roy Tennant California Digital Library

2. Goals • Raise questions • Spark imaginations • Motivate • Encourage professional self-criticism

3. More Specifically… • I will focus on our primary and most shameful failure: our inability to provide an easy and effective information locating tool • Remember: only librarians like to search, everyone else likes to find • However, we are failing even to do things we have explicitly tried to do • Let’s take a look at the evidence…

6. 260 Berkley, CA : Library Solutions Press, [c]1993 300 [vii,]134 p. : ill., maps ; 28 cm 500 Includes bibliographic references (p. 32-35) and index 650 0 Internet 250 1st ed 260 Berkley, CA : Library Solutions Press, c1993 300 viii, 134 p. : ill., maps ; 29 cm 500 Includes bibliographic references (p. 32-35) and index 500 "An earlier version of this book was published as a workbook in support of hands-on Internet training workshops." 650 0 Internet 250 1st ed 260 Berkeley, CA : Library Solutions Press, c1993 300 viii, 134 p. : ill. [,maps]; 28 cm 504 Includes bibliographical references (p. 32-35) and index 650 0 Internet -- Handbooks, manuals, etc 650 2 Computer User Training 2 Computer Communication Networks 4 3 9

7. Typical Searches • Known Item • “A Few Good Things” • Comprehensive

8. Typical Searches: Known Item • The good: searches can be limited to a particular field: author, title, etc. • The bad: limiting to a particular field doesn’t always act the way you expect • The ugly:

9. The Really Ugly

11. Typical Searches:“A Few Good Things” • The one type of search we have so far ignored in library system design • A type of search that we can do something about today • Bring Google-style relevance to library catalogs

12. Typical Searches: Comprehensive • Most library catalogs hide many things available via regional cooperative or ILL • It is difficult, if not impossible, to search all appropriate journal databases • Most libraries do not provide good access to gray literature and web sites • Subject headings are often unintuitive, and catalogs give no guidance • Catalogs give no chapter-level access to book content

13. Some of the Things Most Users Care About • What information resources are accessible to them • What they have to offer, in more detail (contents, index, cover copy, etc.) • What others think about them • How much pain they must endure to get them • What they can expect when they show up • What they must do with them when they’re done

14. Some of the Things Most Users DoNot Care About • Many of the things we care about • Where the information comes from • Who is responsible for providing it • Quality, if it means spending a lot of time and effort to get it • Differences between printings of the exact same book • The height of a book (in centimeters!)

15. What Many Users Expect • A simple search box • Automatic filters, sorts, and groupings, and/or some that they can apply • Fault-tolerant search systems (“If you can’t give me exactly what I asked for, do your best to give me what I want”) • Let’s see how fault-tolerant we are…

20. Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome -- Africa Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome -- epidemiology -- Africa Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome -- transmission AIDS (Disease) -- Africa AIDS (Disease) -- Africa AIDS (Disease) -- Etiology AIDS (Disease) -- Public opinion AIDS (Disease) -- Social aspects AIDS (Disease) in mass media Arts and society -- History -- 20th century Culture -- Philosophy Ethnic arts Marginality, Social -- History -- 20th century Mass Media Minorities in art Prejudice Public Opinion Race Relations Racism

22. Recap on Library Catalogs • We cannot claim to support any of the top three main types of searches well • Our systems work inconsistently and demonstrably incoherently • Other bibliographic search systems (e.g., Amazon) demonstrate how pitiful our systems are to our users • We have taken very few steps toward fixing our broken systems

23. What We Have • A computerized card catalog focused on inventory control • Non-standard database records • Systems that don’t interoperate • In union catalogs, multiple catalog records for the same book • An A&I database Tower of Babel • Haphazard attempts to provide access to web sites • Limited experiments providing access to gray literature

24. What We Must Do • We should design our systems for 80% of our user needs, not 20% • We must design the public view of our catalogs for searching, not inventory control • We should stop worrying about things that don’t matter (e.g., book measurements) and start worrying about things that do (e.g., our inability to use one record per book) • We must think imaginatively and critically about how to design useful search systems • We need to design systems to integrate access, not fracture it

25. The Road Not (Yet) Taken • Create effective methods to put users in touch with what they need, wherever it can be found • Design fault-tolerant, multi-purpose systems • Build for interoperability • Strive for the Holy Grail of Librarianship: one-stop searching for everything

26. What Most Users Want

27. How We Can Give it To Them The User Interface Online Reference The Integration Engine Serial Databases WorldCat on Steroids Google OAI- Compliant Archives Digital Library Collections Local Circulation Systems

29. Source: ARL Statistics http://searchlight.cdlib.org/cgi-bin/searchlight

32. The Integration Engine • Requirements: • Parse the query for each database • Sort, organize, and de-dup the results • Rank according to perceived relevance • Be fault-tolerant (do the best it can with what it’s given) • Targeted search engines may be better: • Specific topic areas • “A few good things” vs. Comprehensive

33. Concluding Thoughts • We’re failing at our own goals • We need to think imaginatively about our challenges • No library can do this alone • Regional cooperatives are the smallest unit for tackling this problem • A regional cooperative with vision and guts could lead the way for the rest of us