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Maximizing Library Value in the Digital Age

Learn how to create value in libraries by leveraging technology, metadata management, knowledge organization, and interoperability. Discover principles for enhancing patron experience and engaging with the web community effectively.

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Maximizing Library Value in the Digital Age

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  1. Creating (Library) Value in the Age of the Amazoogles University of British Columbia 2006 September 18 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 • Systems & interaction design • ~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 • Information Neutrality • Public Trust • Technical • Systems for supporting SCOAP activities • Bookshelves • Cataloging (and catalogs) • Electronic systems

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

  6. Extract (and exploit) value in structured data • Holdings are key • Enrich the data • Amazon-like reviews • Cover Art • Controlled vocabularies • Terminology services • Classification systems • Folksonomies? • Authority control

  7. Increase integration across boundaries • Make the OPAC irrelevant • Solution of last resort • The Green Screen of Boredom (or is that envy?) • “Weave libraries into the Web”

  8. WorldCat in the Open Web • 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)

  9. 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)

  10. 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

  11. Public Bibliography:The Tom Sawyer Strategy • 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.

  12. Book Reviews:Desirable Characteristics of First Class Objects • Book Reviews are (should be) stand-alone First Class Objects: • Harvestable • Attributable • Linked appropriately • Permanently identified • Curated

  13. 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, reduce ‘hackability’, and dilute link currency.

  14. 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

  15. 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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