Primo @ Boston College

1. Primo @ Boston College 1st Gen. Next-Gen. Discovery Bob Gerrity AUL for Library Systems & Information Technology ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

2. outline • background • implementation process • quick demo • locally developed add-ons • user feedback/initial reactions • lessons learned • future ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

3. 30,000-foot view (NOT!) ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

4. What is Primo? • Ex Libris’ next-gen. discovery and delivery platform • Decouples discovery layer from the ILS • Incorporates technologies developed outside the library arena • Two search components: • Local (your catalog, digital collections, IR content) • Uses locally indexed data • Remote (subscription databases) • Uses federated search ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

5. about BC • Private, Jesuit university • User Population: 9,000 undergrads, 4,800 grad students, 850 faculty • Library Metrics: 2.5 million volumes, 200 FTE staff, $8m acquisitions budget • ARL library (since 2000) • Carnegie Classification—Doctoral/Research Extensive • The place Bill Ayers didn’t speak at… ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

6. about library technology @ BC • Small staff, so • No bleeding edge • “Early followers” • Willingness to experiment • Perfection is not the goal • “Just Do It” • Comfortable working with [certain] vendors ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

7. Aha! moment ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

8. need for next-gen. catalog • Traditional OPAC considered deficient/irrelevant as modern discovery tool • Growing number of library discovery systems with separate search interfaces • Google and Amazon have redefined search expectations for most of our users: simple search, relevant results • Web 2.0 features needed (tagging, recommendations, reviews, support for mobile devices, etc.) ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

9. need for next-gen catalog user perspective: too many search choices ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

10. Administrative perspective: too many discovery systems to maintain discovery category system metadata schema content size dlib.bc.edu:8882 library.bc.edu/F escholarship.bc.edu databases.bc.edu metaquest.bc.edu Digital Collections DigiTool MARC, DC, METS Digital content we create: image collections, finding aids, streamed media ~15k records OPAC ALEPH MARC What we buy: books, journals, govdocs, media ~2.5m records Institutional Repository DigiTool DC BC-produced scholarship: (ETDs, working papers, postprints, peer-reviewed journals ~10k records Online Databases MetaLib MARC Subscription databases (descriptive info. And configs for federated search) ~500 records E-journals SFX MARC Subscription e-journals (holdings and configs for OpenURL linking) ~64k records local content remote content ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

11. Administrative perspective: too many discovery systems to maintain bc.edu/holmes primo discovery category system metadata schema content size dlib.bc.edu:8882 library.bc.edu/F escholarship.bc.edu databases.bc.edu metaquest.bc.edu Digital Collections DigiTool MARC, DC, METS Digital content we create: image collections, finding aids, streamed media ~15k records OPAC ALEPH MARC What we buy: books, journals, govdocs, media ~2.5m records Institutional Repository DigiTool DC BC-produced scholarship: (ETDs, working papers, postprints, peer-reviewed journals ~10k records Online Databases MetaLib MARC Subscription databases (descriptive info. And configs for federated search) ~500 records E-journals SFX MARC Subscription e-journals (holdings and configs for OpenURL linking) ~64k records local content remote content ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

12. Internal pitch: decoupling search from ILS ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

13. Choices (2006) • Endeca • Primo • Charter-member program offered clear benefits (pricing, input on development) • Prior experience with Ex Libris as early adopters (SFX, MetaLib) • Opportunity to apply local expertise/resources where they will have biggest impact on our users ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

14. Implementation 5 months ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

15. Implementation • Small technical implementation team • included staff from Systems, Reference & Instructional Services, and Cataloging. • Larger Public services group • established to coordinate ongoing assessment, recommend enhancements. • Intent was to solicit and incorporate feedback from end users, not just library staff ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

16. Scope of BC’s Primo • Local index (“BC Collections”) • Local catalog (ALEPH) • faculty publications (ALEPH-separate db) • statistical data (ALEPH-separate db) • ETDs (Digital Commons/DigiTool) • digital collections (DigiTool) • course reserves (ALEPH-separate db) • research guides (LibGuides) ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

17. Scope of BC’s Primo • Remote: Articles/Databases • Federated search via MetaLib ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

18. Expanding “local” content ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

19. Expanding “local” content ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

20. Primo past (Nov. ‘07): SuperSleuth *beta* Feedback loop ALA 2008 Midwinter Meeting, Philadelphia

21. Primo present: Holmes OneSearch ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

23. Quick look at Primo in action ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

24. Results de-duped and FRBRized ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

25. E-shelf with push to Web 2.0 services ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

26. Push to mobile device ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

27. Support for tagging ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

28. Local development: stack mapping ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

29. Local development: recommender ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

30. usage stats: trends Jan 1 2009 – May 10 2998 93% ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

31. usage stats ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

32. User feedback A sampling (grad student): ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

33. User feedback A sampling (grad student): ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

34. User feedback A sampling (staff): ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

35. User feedback A sampling (staff): ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

36. User feedback A sampling (staff): ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

37. big issues so far • separate search tabs for local and remote searches • understandable from technical standpoint • …but users don’t know or care why • remote search not fast, unpredictable • understandable from technical standpoint • …but users don’t know or care why ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

38. Lessons learned • Focus on user needs, not librarians’ • Redefining library search is easier for users than for librarians • We need more Java expertise • Targeted locally developed add-ons appear to be worth the investment • Library technology landscape is changing faster than we expected ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

39. Lessons learned Agree on the goal Perfect Good Good enough Quality Staff effort

40. Future? • We’re comfortable with Primo for near term (2-4 years) • Good alternatives available that we would be looking at if we were looking now • VuFind (open source), AcquaBrowser (commercial) • Elephant in room (or at least on horizon) is WCL—may be a game-changer ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

41. Whither (wither?) competition? “This first step toward Web-scale, cooperative library management services connects your users’ search experience with library systems—today, that means WorldCat, your catalog, local availability and resource sharing. Soon, OCLC will take the next steps and pilot Web-scale delivery and circulation, license management, print and electronic acquisitions, and more.” [what else is there?] ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

42. Back to the future! ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

43. ARL Membership Meeting, Houston

44. Thank you • Questions? url: http://bc.edu/holmes contact: gerrityr@bc.edu ARL Membership Meeting, Houston