One-Stop Metasearch Tools: Friendly Time Saver or Confusing Quagmire?

1. One-Stop Metasearch Tools: Friendly Time Saver or Confusing Quagmire? RUSA/MOUSS Catalog Use Committee ALA Annual Conference June 22, 2003 Ed Tallent Boston College Libraries

2. One-Stop Metasearch Tools: Friendly Time Saver or Confusing Quagmire? RUSA/MOUSS Catalog Use Committee ALA Annual Conference June 22, 2003 Ed Tallent Boston College Libraries

9. Research Style: The Issues • Searching approach • How do students start their research? • Knowledge • How do they learn about available resources? • Choosing resources • What motivates them to use the resources they use? • Resistance to change • Students deal with change in the library very well, but does their behavior change?

10. Searching approach • On their terms only: keyword dominance. • Ignore subject structures, use basic searches • Trial and error. • Work with results, try different terms, do not use Refine options • Resource blur. • Not interested in librarian distinctions between database and e-journal; content is supreme. • Don’t make me think! In and out. • Interface needs to be clean and basic. • Do I need to look in all those volumes? • As in the print world, there is a desire to follow the path of least resistance, not put too much time into the research, to be satisficed!

11. Knowledge • They didn’t read the news today, oh boy. • Screens are not read, they are scanned; too much text is not helpful. • Time is not on their side: how to learn? • Information overload; cannot keep up with the pace; too many pressures to take the time to learn about new library resources. • I know what I know (and that’s enough): utter pragmatism. • So, they will stick with what has worked in the past; not risk takers when it comes to using library resources; • OPAC • Yes, users understand pretty well what an OPAC does. Can we capitalize on this or at least learn from this experience?

12. Choosing resources • Reading lists. • Choosing other resources from course readings, reserves and required readings. • Recommendations from ________. • Teacher, roommate, parent, …. • References from readings. • Follow up on readings, links from footnotes and bibliographies. • What’s in the library? • Students tend to have a somewhat conservative impression of what resources the library has, will sometimes seek information outside of the library that can be more easily (and thoroughly) accessed via the library; search engines used more heavily to locate resources. • Where is the library in this picture? • It’s not a discovery tool the way it should be; too often it is used when the student want to find know items

13. Resistance to change • Do what works until…. • Students will work with something until it doe does not work or it fails; what do they do then? • Non-experimental. • The approach to resource use is conservative; not willing to take a chance on using resources that might not succeed • Work vs. leisure split. • Their attitude toward library resources is pragmatic; they do not want bells and whistles, but resources that are utilitarian and efficient; the amount of time they want to spend on the use of library research tools is budgeted;

16. MetaQuest: The Issues • Dealing with pragmatism: I’ve logged in, what do I gain? • Immediate benefits of MetaQuest are not obvious; • Too much text, too many steps. • Again, reading the screen is not a priority; • You’re making me choose! • Students want to start searching right away; • What’s so special? • We offer other ways to search multiple databases simultaneously; we need to make clear why the MetaQuest approach is worth their while. See the following examples.

23. Issues, continued • Minimal personal customization. • For example, only one profile and limited options on determining the number of records to display on each screen. • Merging search results. • Given the way students, search the maximum number of records that can be merged is too low. • Display issues. • Displays of full text etc can vary from vendor to vendor; this can frustrate the student. • Lack of alerts. • These are important if we want to keep MetaQuest in the student’s mind; • Lack of statistics. • We need to know what is being used; • Database choices. • Some disciplines offer more resources to search than others; the library needs to commit to a resource like this and, for example, make Z39.50 access a high priority;

24. What Works? • The concept. • Students want this service; students want a way to begin; students need to be exposed to more resources; the library needs to respond to interdisciplinary searching; • Quick and easy searching. • A basic approach to starting a search is valued; • Brief result with citation (local enhancement). • There is a desire for as much information as possible immediately up front; • Title for more information: almost intuitive. • SFX: service and content. • Linking to full-text, the library catalog, etc saves the time (and clicks) of the user and is valued; • Linking out. • The link to the native interface is always available and is always an option for those who need more in-depth searching;

25. Where are we headed? • Simplicity and a quick search. • The new release will offer a quick search of 10 resources and will be less texty; • Deep linking. • We are experimenting with linking into MetaQuest from other parts of the web site – list of online databases, Research Guides, etc • Deal with blur. • Adding e-journals to the next release of MetaLib is a step forward, but again students do not make the distinctions libraries do – we need to continue working on this integration; • Database decisions. • The library needs to think differently about database decisions and think about Z39.50 and Open URL more seriously; • MetaQuest in the Library services context. • How do we present this tool in our package of overall library services? • A discovery tool! • This is desperately needed and we need to move aggressively in this direction.