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The Web and the OPAC: Creating Library Value in the Age of the Amazoogles

This presentation discusses how libraries can create value in the digital age by utilizing web technologies and integrating with online platforms like Amazon. Topics include metadata management, knowledge organization, content management, and interoperability.

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The Web and the OPAC: Creating Library Value in the Age of the Amazoogles

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  1. The Web and the OPAC - Creating (Library) Value in the Age of the AmazooglesNational AutonomousUniversity of Mexico 9 October 2006 Stuart L. Weibel Senior Research Scientist, OCLC Research Visiting Scholar, University of Washington iSchool

  2. OCLC Research • Research and standardization: • OCLC services • Membership • Library evangelism to the Web community • Metadata management • Knowledge organization • Content management • Interoperability • Users and systems interactions • ~30 employees

  3. What do we mean by value? • The Library Business Model • Make information look free to end users • Aggregation of public resources for management, organization, and curation of public content • The SCOAP (of the) Mission • Selection • Collection • Organization • Access • Preservation • Return on investment • Return of Patrons

  4. Value Domains • Societal • Long term, authoritative curation of the cultural, technical, and scientific assets of a society • Different challenges in paper versus electronic libraries • Information Neutrality • Public Trust • Technical • Systems for supporting SCOAP activities • Bookshelves and furniture • Cataloging (and catalogs) • Electronic systems

  5. Value Domains • Societal • Long term, authoritative curation of the cultural, technical, and scientific assets of a society • Different challenges in paper versus electronic libraries • Information Neutrality • Public Trust • Technical • Systems for supporting SCOAP activities • Bookshelves and furniture • Cataloging (and catalogs) • Electronic systems

  6. Value Domains (continued) • Social: So-called Library 2.0 approaches • Policies and services to promote community engagement • Recommender Services (reader advisories) • Ala Nancy Pearl (a real librarian!)? • People who bought X, also bought Y (Amazon.com) • Book Reviews (again, Amazon.com) • LibraryThing.com • Tagging – folksonomies: what value? • Public Bibliography • What is more important for discovery? A book review or a MARC record? • Linking structure among first classobjects is a central feature of the Web

  7. The Nancy Pearl Action Figure(complete with shushing action!)

  8. Value Domains (continued) • Social: So-called Library 2.0 approaches • Policies and services to promote community engagement • Recommender Services (reader advisories) • Ala Nancy Pearl (a real librarian!)? • People who bought X, also bought Y (Amazon.com) • Book Reviews (again, Amazon.com) • LibraryThing.com • Tagging – folksonomies: what value? • Public Bibliography • What is more important for discovery? A book review or a MARC record? • Linking structure among first classobjects is a central feature of the Web

  9. Everything 2.0 (Web 2.0, Library 2.0….) • Bringing people back into the loop through the use of so-called Social Software: • Andrew McAfee’s SLATES pneumonic: • Search: Find what you need, enhanced by emergent description (see tags, below) • Links: link relationships or link ranking algorithms • Authoring: Ease of content creation – spare me the angle brackets, make it bone simple • Tags: What do my colleagues call this? I bet it works better than what the IT department calls it • Extensions: If you thought X was [good | interesting | important | useful], you might, by extension, find Y so • Signals: tell me something has changed

  10. Extract (and exploit) value in structured data • Holdings are key – who has the item? • Links to catalogs and virtual reference services • Enrich the data • Amazon-like book reviews • Cover art & table of contents (full text?) • Controlled vocabularies (esp Medicine, law, sciences) • Folksonomies? • Classification systems • Authority control

  11. Increase integration across boundaries • The OPAC is becoming irrelevant for end-users (but remains a local management tool • Solution of last resort for users • OPACs have less functionality than other alternatives (Amazoogles) • “Weave libraries into the Web” • Drive our services into the open Web • Unplug & Play • Search engines • Social software systems

  12. WorldCat in the Open Web • WorldCat subsets determined by the search engine (not the complete database) • On these sites: • Include either of the following with your search terms: • Google "find in a library" (include phrasing quote marks) • Yahoo! site:worldcatlibraries.org (no space after colon) • English speakers won’t do this… can you imagine speakers of other languages???

  13. Other WorldCat Partner Sites: • Abebooks (abebooks.com) • Alibris (alibris.com) • Amazon.com (amazon.com) • Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (abaa.com) • Biblio (biblio.com) • BookPage (bookpage.com) • DirectTextbook (directtextbook.com) • Google Scholar and Google Books (scholar.google.com, books.google.com) • Greenwood Publishing Group (greenwood.com) • HCI Bibliography (hcibib.org) • Windows Live Academic (academic.live.com)

  14. Some general principles for technical value creation in a network environment • Reduce impediments to search • Increase integration across boundaries • Build Network Effect value • Extract (and exploit) value in structured data • Increase the efficiency of metadata creation • Promote participation • Book reviews • Linking • Recommender systems

  15. Public Bibliography: • Metadata is expensive • Cataloging data is important, costly, and ill-suited to public use (at least for some aspects of public use) • Mobilizing users to be participants in the creation of metadata (in the form of book reviews, recommender services, and linking, either explicit or inferred) is a potentially rich source of metadata and linking currency • Amazon is effective at this • LibraryThing has a strong and growing approach • Libraries and large cooperative cataloging agencies are thus far not doing so well.

  16. Book Reviews:Desirable Characteristics of First Class Objects • Book Reviews are (should be) stand-alone First Class Objects: • Harvestable – findable by search engines on the Web • Attributable – I want credit… • Linked appropriately to a persistent catalog such as World or a national catalog • Persistently identified (the identifier is stable over time) • Curated (the content is stable over time)

  17. Link Currency • Linkages are an important currency on the Web: • Who links to you • Who do you link to • To rise in relevance rankings, library-managed links should be persistent and of one form: • http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26160663&referer=brief_results • http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=083890596X&qt=owc_search • http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=083890596X • http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26160663 • Multiple identifiers are confusing and dilute link currency.

  18. Libraries must compare favorably with related information experiences that our patrons expect: • Discovery and recommender services • Web 2.0 social network capabilities • Experiences of comparable commercial service providers • Last-mile delivery capability • Bookstore social experience • Coffee-shop salons • People to help us navigate the intricacies of a complicated knowledge space • We are offering an experience as well as a service

  19. Stuart L. Weibel Visit me at: http://weibel-lines.typepad.com Contact me at: Stuart.Weibel@gmail.com Thank you for your attention

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