Shake Your HIPs!

1. Shake Your HIPs! “Just shake your hips Do the hip shake, babe!” (Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street) Dave Pattern – d.c.pattern@hud.ac.uk University of Huddersfield http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

2. What is this session about? • share ideas and “plant seeds” • explore the possibilities and limitations of what can be done with HIP 3 and Horizon 7 • maybe ponder the future of the OPAC? • there’s over 50 slides, so we might not get through everything unless I go like the clappers!!! http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

3. What will the session cover? • borrowing suggestions • “did you mean” spelling suggestions • serendipity keyword suggestions • keyword search email alerts • RSS library account feeds • lending history graphs • web services – REST interface and a9.com • some other silly stuff http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

4. The Disclaimer… • SirsiDynix does not provide support for any changes to the XSL stylesheets: “Dynix does not accept any responsibility for damage caused by the changes that you choose to make to your Information Portal system, unless you make the change using the supported Information Portal Administration tool.” (HIP User Interface Customization Guide) http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

5. Why make changes to your HIP? • add new features • remove existing features that you don’t need • improve HIP usability & tweak the user experience • …because it’s good fun! ;-) http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

6. Always take precautions… • set up a test server • connect it to your test database… • …or connect it your live database, but only run the XSL Processor & JBoss Server • add a footer to warn people it’s your test HIP • back up your XSL files before any making changes • add HTML style comments to all changes: <!-- this bit added by Dave (22/June/2006) --> http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

7. Borrowing suggestions http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

8. Borrowing suggestions • Why? • users are familiar with Amazon’s “people who bought this, also bought these…” • users like to browse • the book a user wants might not always be available • it supports serendipity • Ranganathan’s 2nd & 3rd Laws of Library Science: • “Every reader his or her book. Every book its reader.” http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

9. Borrowing suggestions – how? • we use Ajax to insert the suggestions into the rendered HIP pages • “people who borrowed this item…” • based on data mining historical circulation data • “similar subject headings…” • based on LCSH • “other editions…” • uses the OCLC xISBN web service to locate other editions http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

10. Making your Circ data work harder! • Huddersfield has a “circ_tran” table containing over 2,000,000 circulation transactions from a 10 year period • we used “data mining” techniques to explore that data: • “Data mining can be defined as the nontrivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, and potentially useful information from data” • suggestions need to be created in advance, as it takes several hours to process the entire table http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

11. Making your Circ data work harder! • start with a book • find everyone who’s ever borrowed it • find all the books they’ve ever borrowed • find the most commonly borrowed books from that subgroup • suggest books that more than X people borrowed Privacy is important – make sure that X is as large as possible! http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

12. Other editions • use OCLCs xISBN web service to locate other editions: • http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/xisbn/ • http://labs.oclc.org/xisbn/0443064229 • you need to be able to check ISBNs quickly for this to be effective in real-time, otherwise you could cache lookup results http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

13. Other ways of doing it? • use Amazon Web Services to bring in their suggestions • use high number of CKOs to provide suggestions • store details of items CKOd at the same time and use those to build suggestions http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

14. Borrowing suggestions - worth it? • very positive feedback from users! • useful when all copies of a suggested title are on loan • useful for browsing around the fringes of a subject • useful for locating the latest editions of books • could be used to make suggestions based on a borrower’s entire loan history? http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

15. Borrowing Suggestions - statistics • “also borrowed” • average ~1000 clicks per weekday during term time • “similar subjects” • average ~800 clicks per weekday during term time • “other editions” • average ~350 clicks per weekday during term time http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

16. Spelling Suggestions http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

17. Spelling Suggestions • Why? • because it’s 2006 and the UK HIP still doesn’t have a “did you mean?” feature! • the slightly patronising “Check your spelling” error message annoys me!  • one of the basic rules of web site design is to avoid “dead ends” – they just frustrate the user • according to our logs, 23% of all keyword searches were giving zero results http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

18. Spelling Suggestions – how? • uses the open source Aspell spell checker: • http://aspell.sourceforge.net/ • uses custom wordlists/dictionaries compiled from the relevant Horizon tables • the suggestions are “index sensitive” • Ajax is used to squeeze the suggestions into the “zero results” page • session ID and profile information is also included in the suggestion links http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

19. Spelling Suggestions – worth it? • DEFINITELY YES!!! • “did you means” get up to 2000 clicks per day • we have a large number of Nursing students who regularly search the OPAC for medical terms • however, beware that suggestions might highlight the typos in your bib records… http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

20. Some Common Bib Typos… • “mangement” Huddersfield: 12 Lincoln: 5 Nottingham Trent: 10 British Library: 248 • “univeristy” Huddersfield: 33 Lincoln: 1 Nottingham Trent: 32 British Library: 327 • “sussessful” ?!? …I’ll get me coat!!! • see “Typographical errors in library databases” http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

21. Serendipity Keyword Suggestions http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

22. Serendipity Keyword Suggestions • Why? • users often enter keywords that are too specific and get zero results (e.g. diuretic) • users don’t always enter the best keywords • there’s not always a member of library staff nearby to give suggestions and help out • user expectations are much higher now – you can type a question in AskJeeves, so why not OPAC? • e.g. what is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything? http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

23. Keyword Suggestions – how? • for zero result searches, run the keywords against other resources – e.g. answers.com • harvest useful keywords and (if possible) confirm there are matches on the catalogue • cons: • difficult to do quickly in real-time, and suggestions may be irrelevant or too broad • we have no control over the suggestions http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

24. Keyword Suggestions – worth it? • possibly maybe! • we think giving the user some potentially useful suggestions is better than nothing at all • the way we’ve done it is a fairly ugly hack, but for a first attempt it’s not bad • …wouldn’t it be great if the OPAC really did understand what you were trying to search for and could give you relevant suggestions? http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

25. usage - cumulative clicks by hour of day (100 day period) http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

26. Keyword Search Email Alerts http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

27. Keyword Search Email Alerts • subscribe to specific keyword searches in HIP • whenever relevant new items are added to the catalogue, the user is sent an email with full details http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

28. Keyword Search Email Alerts – how? • a couple of small Perl scripts: • one CGI script to set up a new alert • second automated script which processes all existing alerts and sends email when new matches are found • both scripts make use of the ability of HIP to output XML instead of HTML: • append “&GetXML=true” to end of HIP URL • went live on Sunday, so no feedback yet • over 2100 patrons have signed up to a similar scheme at Hennepin County Library http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

29. RSS Library Account Feeds - RSS http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

30. RSS Library Account Feeds • RSS is supposed to be the “Next Big Thing”! • Library Account information / overview: • items on loan • items due back soon or overdue • items on hold • request items ready to collect • outstanding fines • due to go live before September 2006 http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

31. RSS Library Account Feeds - formatted… http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

32. RSS Library Account Feeds - Bloglines… http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

33. RSS Library Account Feeds – how? • mod_perl script runs against live Horizon database • each feed URL is encrypted and the feed data itself is anonymous • https://library.hud.ac.uk/rss/689630bef948576c67d3029cbe1908 • each RSS feed request is cached for an hour to avoid heavy database usage • we still need to fully integrate the feeds into the HIP borrower information pages http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

34. RSS Library Account Feeds - worth it? • fingers crossed it will be! • previous developments have shown that students prefer to get information “pushed” to them (e.g. pre-overdue emails) • RSS is extremely flexible and the end user can decide how and where to display the feed • e.g. University portal, RSS via SMS, Bloglines, Firefox web browser, Internet Explorer 7, etc • we hope to add more RSS feeds to HIP soon… http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

35. Lending History Graphs http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

36. Lending History Graphs • generated from “circ_tran” table data • only viewable in HIP on the Library Staff subnet • used for stock editing http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

37. Lending History Graphs – how? • graphs created by Perl script using GD Graphics Library • data fetched in real time from “circ_tran” table (contains 10 years of circulation transactions) http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

38. Lending History Graphs – worth it? • good feedback from staff • we’re considering adding more “staff only” information to HIP http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

39. Web Services - REST http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

40. Web Services - REST • why? • provides an alternative method of getting at our bib data • we can include extra data which isn’t available in HIP • we have lots of students who could do cool things with the library data – Art & Design and Computing students are typically infrequent users of the library • help support mashups and promote “unintended uses” • REST + XSL = accessible OPAC! http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

41. Web Services – a9.com OpenSearch http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

42. Web Services – a9.com OpenSearch • why? • provides an alternative search interface to the OPAC • why force people to come to the OPAC when they want to search for things? • OpenSearch is fully supported in Internet Explorer 7 http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

43. OpenSearch in IE7 http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

44. OpenSearch in IE7 – add provider http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

45. OpenSearch in IE7 – search targets http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

46. OpenSearch in IE7 – sample search http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

47. Web Services – how? • both rely on being able to get XML versions of pages from HIP (i.e. append “GetXML=true”) • REST • XML from HIP converted into REST style XML • http://www.daveyp.com/blog/index.php/archives/59/ • OpenSearch • XML from HIP converted to a9.com compatible RSS feed • http://www.daveyp.com/blog/index.php/archives/70/ http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

48. Web Services – worth it? • I think so • we need to move towards pushing our data out into other applications and interfaces • at least one new 2006-7 course plans to include tasks which will use library data http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

49. Dewey DNA Profile • visualisation of check outs over a specific period, grouped by Dewey classification (code available here) • inspired by Seattle Public Library’s “Making Visible the Invisible” http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/

50. Word Splat! • turn your latest check outs into a work of art ;-) • takes random words from the titles of the most recently checked out items http://www.daveyp.com/lincoln/