Moving to the network level: discovery and disclosure

1. Moving to the network level:discovery and disclosure Lorcan Dempsey ALCTS ALA Midwinter, Seattle January 19 2007

2. The network rewrites behaviors

3. A few things…. • Workflow and Attention • Aggregation of demand and suppy: the long tail

4. ~18 months old No FaceBook, MySpace Library?

5. University of Minnesota http://www.lib.umn.edu/about/mellon/KM%20JStor%20Presentation.pps

6. Netvibes, onfolio, my yahoo, myspace, RSS aggregator, … Self assembled digital identity Prefabricated (e.g. CMS) Database > website > workflow

8. Workflow • Then • Users built workflow around the library • Now • The library must build its services around user workflow Get into the flow Disclose into other environments

9. Attention • Then • Resources scarce, attention abundant • Now • Attention scarce, resources abundant Competition for attention

10. Impact? Long tail information providers Systemwide efficiences • Aggregation of supply • Unified discovery • Low transaction costs • Aggregation of demand

11. Aggregate supply? 1.7% of circulations are ILLs (60% of aggregate G5 collection owned by one library only) Aggregate demand? 20% of collection accounted for 90% of use (2 research libraries over ~4 years) Each book its reader Each reader his/her book Libraries and the long tail dynamic

12. Note: All statistics are preliminary and subject to change. Final report forthcoming soon. The Library Long Tail(using holdings as measure of popularity) “Head” Number of Holdings Figure not drawn to scale; for illustration purposes only “Long Tail” Items ranked by system-wide popularity Head: Top 10% of WorldCat records (ranked by holdings) account for 80% of total WorldCat holdings Long Tail: Bottom 90% of WorldCat records (ranked by holdings) account for 20% of total WorldCat holdings

13. Note: All statistics are preliminary and subject to change. Final report forthcoming soon. ILL and the Long Tail(FY 2005 OCLC ILL transactions) ~75% of ILL requests were directed at the “Head” Number of Holdings ~25% of ILL requests were directed at the “Long Tail” Items ranked by system-wide popularity By comparison, Chris Anderson (The Long Tail, 2006) reports: Amazon: ~ 25% of sales from the “long tail” Netflix: ~ 20% of sales from the “long tail” * Question: are current ILL systems adequately supporting demand for the library long tail?

14. For many years, Chinese people cited a proverb: if the wine smells really wonderful, customers will come in spite of the length of the lane.

15. The network rewrites the library: discovery and disclosure

16. Chris Beckett http://www.scholinfo.com/presentations/2006/8/10/the-new-world-order-in-collection-development-the-commercial-perspective.html

17. Discovery: focus on catalog with some related … • Local Discovery Environments • Shared Discovery Environments • Syndicated Discovery Environments • Leveraged Discovery Environments

18. Local Discovery environment • Some (not necessarily aligned) motivations • Make data work harder • Integrate access to locally managed resources • Escape from ILS limitations • NCSU • Rochester • SOLR • Worldcat 2.0 • Primo • Encore …

26. Some remarks • How does MARC data play with other data • Subjects, authors, .. • Historic investment in structure? • Duplicate cost? • Relationship to Metasearch?

27. Shared discovery environment • Increase impact • Create gravitational pull • Aggregate demand and supply • Reduce costs

30. Some comments • Integration of discovery to delivery becoming essential • A move to shared environments seems more likely with increased ability to ‘view’ different levels • Increased gravitational pull: greater use of collections • Growing evidence

31. Syndicated discovery experience • Syndicate data or service or links

38. RSS Portlets APIs, Protocol-based Projects Sakailibrary … Syndicating services Not as rapid as one might expect?

42. Some remarks • Syndication of data now common among data providers • Routing issue for non-unique materials • Resolution • Worldcat • Libraries exposing licensed content holdings interesting • Google Scholar

43. Service disclosure less common • APIs • Web services • Portlets • HTML fragments – ‘search boxes’ • Toolbars • Widgets, extensions, …

44. The Leveraged discovery experience • In some ways the most interesting • Use another discovery service to connect back to your resources • Compare to the situation with article databases and resolvers

47. Click – look in OCLC Resolver Registry – pass through to the relevant library

48. Some remarks • Some of these are toy-like now, but indicate a direction • Increased capacity to ‘sense’ structure (microformats) will improve ability.

49. So …. • The library website is not the front door • We need to connect multiple discovery environments to library fulfilment options • We need to put library resources in users’ workflow • We need to place library resources in places which aggregate demand • Need more robust machine interfaces for the ILS so that we can put its functionality in other places (medium term)

50. And OCLC ….