George Machovec Associate Director Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries george@coalliance

1. Metasearch academic perspectives George Machovec Associate Director Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries george@coalliance.org

2. Colorado Alliance: Who Are We? • Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries • A non-profit consortium of 12 libraries founded in 1974. 501c3 • History of innovation • CARL ILS (sold in 1995) – now TLC • UnCover (sold in 1995) – now Ingenta • No relationship to current TLC/CARL • 12 staff

3. Colorado Alliance: Who Are We? • Member of ICOLC • We do standard consortial stuff with a twist • Database licensing • Data hosting (locally operate III, Endeavor, CARL/TLC, Ovid, SilverPlatter) • Prospector (INN-Reach) regional union catalog • Software development (e.g. Gold Rush, Colorado Digitization Project, The Charleston Advisor) • Operates over 20 servers with multiple T1s and BGP Internet redundancy

4. Auraria CU/Boulder CU/Health Sciences CSU Colo School of Mines Denver Public Library Univ of Northern Colorado University of Denver University of Denver/Law Regis University Univ of Wyoming Colorado Alliance: Who Are We?

5. MetaSearch What’s Important to Academics • MetaSearch showcase held at Colorado Alliance 18 months ago • Presentations by leading commercial services • After presentations the participants discussed their interests and needs

6. MetaSearch What’s Important to Academics • Research audience must be supported, but should also be able to serve adult, child, distance, scholarly, undergrad, doctoral, course-specific, and situational audiences. • Good authentication tools. Ideally patrons should only need to authenticate once for access to all resources and content • Good link checking tools that are flexible in implementation

7. MetaSearch What’s Important to Academics • Easy to implement, learn and to use • The Web workspace should be flexible and customizable to fit within the existing library design • Uses should be able to customize the environment (personalize), but only if desired (many patrons don’t care to do this).

8. MetaSearch What’s Important to Academics • Flexibility in target selection. In addition to primary librarian suggested sites, additional sites might be suggested by the interface for users to select. • Cross protocol calls (Z39.50, http, SQL, SRW, SRU) should be supported. • Supports adaptive technologies for ADA compliance.

9. MetaSearch What’s Important to Academics • Content (selection lists) should be systematically selected and provided, offering guidance to users trying to identify targets. Good help for further information. • New service alerts should be automatically provided without users having to search for them. Perhaps an SDI email service for academics notifying them of new database or service content in areas of interest.

10. MetaSearch What’s Important to Academics • Display incoming results immediately to avoid dead wait time. Give user some indication that more is coming • Ability to support many targets! Academics purchase much online. • Security and privacy features should include the ability to set timeouts. SSL or similar encryption should be supported. • De-duplication & priority setting for displays • PDA or PC tablet support

11. MetaSearch What’s Important to Academics • Mimic institutional programming, e.g., areas of excellence • Links to and from online courseware. Better integration with online classes. • Possible e-commerce support (e.g. document delivery) if online content not available • Easy ability to go into native search interface mode if necessary • Ability to use system statistics for future interface and display. Perhaps heavily used resources given priority display. Dynamic?

12. MetaSearch What’s Important to Academics • OpenURL enabled • Will help support linking with source services that are not or have done it poorly • Would provide a uniform manner for displaying links to further content • Needs to offer flexibility in link language, graphics and placement

13. MetaSearch: Academic Targets • Abstracting/Indexing Services • Publishers (e.g. Elsevier ScienceDirect) – important to be able to pull togther • Aggregators • Electronic reserves • Local databases including digitization projects • OAI resources • Institutional repositories

14. Academic Metasearch SurveySelected responses • How is interface categorized? • By subject categories. Some offer limiting by format (e.g. full-text, images) • Some are targeting specific audiences (e.g. undergrads) • Who implements • Implementation/management team. End-user interface by Web librarian. Catalog librarian creates searching scripts • Assistant Electronic Resources librarian • Systems Department

15. Academic Metasearch SurveySelected responses • How many targets have you put in your interface? • 90 out of 250 after 6 months (a MetaLib site) • 70 out of 300 after 12 months (a FD site) • 30 after 3 months (limited license on Metafind) • 50 out of 200 after 6 months (an Endeavor site)

16. Academic Metasearch SurveySelected responses • Are you pointing to publisher specific websites? • Highwire, JSTOR (link only), IEEE (link only) [a Metalib site] • JSTOR, ProjectMuse, Wiley, Scirus (a MetaFind site) • Elsevier, Wiley, Blackwell Synergy, Highwire, Kluwer (a FD site)

17. Academic Metasearch SurveySelected responses • How did you select which resources to add? • Paid ExLibris for some set-up. Did easy low-hanging fruit. Asked selectors to prioritize products • Used statistics for initial list. Assembled working groups in topical areas to select final targets • Task forces were selected and got feedback from library staff

18. Academic Metasearch SurveySelected responses • Special or interesting targets? • ContentDM (for local digitization effort) • Classical.com • TARO (repository browse at the Univ of Houston) • Local archives and manuscript collection

19. Academic Metasearch SurveySelected responses • What bothers you the most? • Options for end-user display not as flexible has hoped • Getting the interface to work with campus authentication • Linking to resources that do not easily support an incoming search • Limits in the number of targets and/or returned result sets due to IT

20. Academic Metasearch SurveySelected responses • What bothers you the most? • Lack of relevancy ranking • Lack of knowing what fields can be search as this is is not standardized across targets • Lack of sufficient (or poor quality) metadata that causes false or no hits • Too much customization and ongoing maintenance by library • Wish it was easier to set-up and maintain targets

21. Academic Metasearch SurveySelected responses • What do you like most? • One stop shopping • Great for undergrads! • Helps cut down on searching confusion with a unified (common) interface • Good starting point and takes advantage of librarian vetting for quality resources

22. Academic Metasearch SurveySelected responses • What do you like most? • Alerts and “my library” features • Saving searches • Love citation manager output (e.g. EndNote)