Overview: Scriblio and the Next-Generation Library Catalogs

1. Overview: Scriblio and theNext-Generation Library Catalogs Workshop on Implementing ScriblioThe Next-Generation Library Catalog25 June 2008The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library K.T. Lamlblkt@ust.hkHead of Library Systems, HKUST Library

2. http://about.scriblio.net/ VideoCode4Lib 2008 Lightning Talk: Scriblio - Casey Bisson4 min - May 13, 2008

3. Contents http://catalog.ust.hk/ • Evolution of Library Catalogs • Major Concepts • HKUST’s Scriblio Implementation • Why Scriblio • Brief History • Customization

4. Evolution of Library Catalogs OPAC Terminal Card Catalog Web OPAC Next-Generation Library Catalog

5. Library Catalogs: Change-in-Progress • “Traditional” catalogs • serve as an inventory list of items held in the library • fail as an information discovery tool • Web-savvy users are accustomed to Web 2.0 interfaces with dynamic content and social networking • dissatisfaction to silo-like catalogs • expecting more than just metadata – they want information and participation • simple search to begin with, plus incremental refinement of search results

6. Ideas Evolved Karen Calhoun. “The changing nature of the catalog and its integration with other discovery tools: final report”. March 17, 2006.<http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf> Marshall Breeding. "Next-Generation Library Catalogs". Library Technology Reports, vol. 43, no. 4, July-August 2007. Eric Lease Morgan. "A ‘Next generation’ library catalog". 2 June 2006.<http://www.library.nd.edu/daiad/morgan/musings/ngc/index.shtml> Nancy Fried Foster, etc. "eXtensible Catalog survey report". July 20, 2007.<http://www.extensiblecatalog.info/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/XC%20survey%20report.pdf>

7. Concepts • Major concepts adopted in the Next-Generation Library Catalog systems: • Faceted browsing • Web Mashup • Dynamically constructed links • Federated searching • Social aspects of Web 2.0

8. Faceted Browsing • Traditional catalog searching • Pre-composed search query • Determine what fields to search on • Query can be quite complicated - advanced search form helps constructing the query • Search may result in “No entry found” • Faceted browsing allows users to refine their search results set based on the feedback and recommendation from the search

9. Composing a search query via an Advanced Search Form

10. Faceted Browsing [2] • What is Facet • An attribute (or property) of an object • MARC metadata schema provides a rich set of attributes for bibliographic objects, for examples: • author, title, subject • publication year, language • format, genre • shelf location • etc. • Object has multiple facets (faces or views)

11. Faceted Browsing [3] Classifying a set of books by the Subject Facet dogs string theory cats Faceted classification – organizing objects by their facets Faceted browsing – navigating in the multiple views of a set of objects; filtering the set by specifying values of various facets

12. Faceted Browsing Step 1: Keyword search on the word “MYSQL” brings up a results set of 110 titles Step 2: Narrow the result set by specifying Subject “Design”. Result sets reduced to 28 titles Step 3: Further filter the result set by specifying Format “E-Resource”. Result sets reduced to 15 titles

13. Web Content Mashup • Combine contents from multiple websites into one single web application • Technologies involved • AJAX • Web-based API (web services) • Direct web page extraction • Content for next-generation library catalogs • Enrichment contents such as book cover images, summaries, table of contents and book reviews • Availability (holdings) information

14. Mashups of web content from various websites Cover imagefromAmazon Summary from Amazon Holdings information from Millennium WebPAC Pro

15. Dynamically Created Links • Being a discovery tool, the next-generation library catalog systems should be able to: • Dynamically construct links to the outside world • Search external content (federated searching) • Outbound links provide more discovery options • suggesting websites and sources that could provide more information and content, for examples: • Other catalogs, union catalogs, WorldCat • OpenURL link resolvers • Google Book Search, Google Scholar, Amazon

16. Dynamically Created Links [2] Various links dynamically generated by HKUST’s Scriblio • ILS supported services, such as request items • Bibliographic management tools, such as Refworks • RSS feeds

17. Federated Searching • Broadcast a search query to multiple search targets and merge the search results returned into one single set • Search targets can be databases, library catalogs and web search engines • A natural merging with the next-generation library catalog systems • Practical issues: • Search query is the lowest denominator of capabilities offered by the search targets

18. Federated Searching [2] • Expert users would prefer using the search interfaces provided by the search targets; while the novice users might just go to Google • Search speed performance dependent on search targets • Usually quite slow • Work-around by retrieving only a subset of the search results from each target • Incompleteness of search results • Misleading users

19. Federated Searching [3] • No good answer yet; possible alternatives: • Harvest metadata from search targets via OAI-PMH to create local mirrors • Content providers to merge their metadata into one single repository

20. Web 2.0 and Social Aspects • Web has version numbers: • Web 1.0 • Static information, linked together • One way communication • Web 2.0 • Coined 2004 by Dale Dougherty (co-founder of O’Reilly Media) to describe the next generation of the Web • Added human factor to Web 1.0; with features that allow social networking, sharing and collaboration.

21. Web 2.0 and Social Aspects [cont.] • Focus on users and communities • Dynamic content with high participation • Web 3.0 • Beyond Web 2.0 • Featuring the semantic web, the 3D web, the media-centric web, and the pervasive web.[Metz, C. ‘Web 3.0: the Internet is changing … again”, PC magazine, April 10, 2007, p.74-79< http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2102852,00.asp>]

22. A tag cloud with terms related to “Web 2.0” Source: <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Web_2.0_Map.svg>

23. Web 2.0 and Social Aspects [cont.] • Examples of Web 2.0 tools and technology that encourage collaboration and social activities: • Blogs, wikis, tagging (folksonomy), social bookmarking, user rating, user reviews, RSS feeds. • Instant messaging, voice over IP (e.g. Skype), podcasting, vlogs • Users participation on the next-generation library catalog • Contribute contents: book reviews, user comments, user tagging, user rating • RSS feeds – for search alert and user contributed contents

24. Selected list of the next-generation library catalog systems eXtensible Catalog WorldCat Local AquaBrowser Endeca Evergreen Scriblio Primo vuFind Koha Polaris Librarything Encore Lucene/Solr Open source software Commercial systems

25. Why Scriblio • Scriblio • Open Source software • Developed by Casey Bisson at Lamson Library of Plymouth State University • Previously called WPopac • Won 2006 Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration • Scriblio is a WordPress plugin • WordPress is a popular blogging software, featuring Web 2.0 technology, such as tagging, RSS feeds, comments, permalinks and trackback

26. Why Scriblio[2] • Smart move – positioning Scriblio on WordPress • “it also offers something we’ve never seen in a library application before: access to a community of knowledge, programmers, and designers outside libraries. Because the core of WPopac is WordPress, and because it preserves WordPress’s rich plugin API and themes structure, it already has more users, designers, developers, and administrators than all the ILS vendors combined.” – Casey Bisson<http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/11133/>

27. Why Scriblio[3] • The reasons why we adopt Scriblio can be illustrated by the following comment we posted on HKUST’s Scriblio Home Page in December 2007: • “It is amazing that with little effort and almost at zero cost, we are able to build a catalog prototype that features Web/Library 2.0 technology such as tagging, faceted searching, user comments, RSS feeds, together with real-time INNOPAC local holdings display, full-text linking to e-journals and e-books, and incorporation of book jacket images, description and review from Amazon.”

28. Scriblio at HKUST • Brief history of the implementation at HKUST • 2006 – began monitoring ideas about the future of library catalogs; surveyed available products (commercial and open-source); tested open-source federated searched software • 9 November 2007 – Downloaded Scriblio and began testing and evaluation • 26 November 2007 – HKUST Next-Generation Library Catalog officially released as Beta • December 2007 to March 2008 – Customization and users feedback • 17 March 2008 – Completed customization with a fresh rebuild of the database

29. The first version of the home page of HKUST’s Scriblio as archived in December 2007

30. Scriblio at HKUST [2] • HKUST’s Customization and Enhancements • Added support for CJK searching and display • Enhanced importer of records from Innovative Interface’s ILS • Added facets for Shelf Location and Publication Year and enhanced the facet for Format/Genre. • Developed automatic batch update of records • Enhanced Availability mashup and dynamic linking • Added OpenSearch support, allowing federated search clients to search Scriblio via this protocol • Customized Scriblio’s WordPress themes

31. Thank you!