Understanding the New Discovery Landscape: Federated Search, Web-scale Discovery, Next-Generation Catalog and the rest Webcast
Date: Thursday, May 6, 2010
Time: 2:00 PM EDT
Duration: 60-minutes
Sponsored by Serials Solutions – http://www.serialssolutions.com/summon

Archived copy of complete presentation

My summary and reaction:

• Webinar was essentially an advertisement for Summon.
• Summon sounds like a promising product, worthy of more investigation.
• Does Summon help libraries expose/integrate the contents of their collections on the broader Web, e.g. into Google/Google Scholar results? Libraries definitely need the metadata aggregation, unified index and holdings/rights management pieces, but how much do we really need the search infrastructure and interface? What libraries really need  is a method for putting the information about what they have out there where users will encounter it when they are searching Google, etc. The library web site is not where users are inclined to do a lot of their searching, and not just because most of our current interfaces suck. Information resources under bibliographic control by libraries are an ever shrinking portion of the information environment that users want to search. Does Summon help to address the larger problem of integrating discovery of  “library” resources with those of the entire Web? While certainly a step in the right direction, Summon still seems to focus on library resources, segregated from the rapidly expanding collection of information resources available on the Web in general.
• How much does Summon cost? Can Summon be implemented at the consortial level (e.g. by Orbis Cascade Alliance for all or selected members who elect to participate)?
• Can Summon access resource sharing data to help connect users with resources that are available through consortial resource sharing agreements, as opposed to locally owned/licensed resources?
• Is Summon just another “black box” product seeking to substitute for what libraries really need: access to metadata and tools that allow them to create and maintain aggregated indexes of content for themselves, that they can then expose to mainstream web resource discovery platforms (e.g.  Google)?

Speakers:

• Marshall Breeding
• Helen Livingston, University of South Australia
• Jane Burke (moderator)

Marshall Breeding:

• Crowded landscape of information providers on the web (Google, Wikipedia, Amazon.com, Ask.com)
• Weaknesses in the interfaces to our current systems drive users toward other sites that have better interfaces, even if we provide better quality resources.
• Catalog is primary tool libraries have provided for years: book, card, OPAC, NextGen, now moving toward Web-scale
• NextGen catalog: modernize interface to incorporate mainstream features now “expected” by end-users, based on their experience on the broader web
• Most libraries now have web sites as well, need to integrate web site and catalog
• Most libraries currently offer a disjointed approach: “menu of silos”, this is an obstacle for users. They don’t care about the complex infrastructure behind the scenes, they want a unified experience on the front-end. Bring all library content together into a single entry point, not dumbed-down.
• Complicated by the fact that many electronic resources libraries to which libraries provide access are siloed in proprietary systems, not easy to provide integrated access.
• Discovery layer applications seek to address this problem.
• http://www.librarytechnology.org/discovery.pl provides a list of current discovery apps
• We need to take advantage of freely available free-text, complemented by high-quality library metadata to provide a better discovery and access system for users. No solution for this yet.
• Federated search is insufficient, problematic.
• Discovery tool based on local pre-populated index (e.g. from ILS, local repositories) is also insufficient, but perhaps required to make the connection between local and  web-scale discovery tools.
• Web-scale applications seek to: build/provide a consolidated index that includes all content (local and remote, often article-level content, local social networking content) in a single search.
• See Breeding’s book Next-Gen Library Catalogs published by Neal Schuman for additional information

Helen Livingston:

• UniSA Library
• Started with Voyager catalog
• Added VuFind in Jan. 2009
• Implemented Summon Sept. 2009
• Recently implemented Moodle for online courses
• 75% of funds spent on electronic resources
• Huge journal collection via e-journal aggregators
• Have placed Summon search boxes throughout the university web site, will soon be in Moodle
• Implementation: massive data clean up to implement VuFind was invaluable in quickly implementing Summon.  Esp. had to clean up 008 and control fields because Summon uses these fields for searching/filtering.
• Summon implementation polarized library staff: some embrace it fully, some feel like it dumbs-down searching too much, perhaps sufficient for undergraduate research, but insufficient for higher level research needs.
• Survey: overwhelmingly positive response from users.
• Summon currently has some weaknesses, see slides for detailed list of those they’ve found.
• In summary: She loves it

Jane Burke:

• Summon overview
• Students want to be self-sufficient and think they are, they don’t want to ask questions
• Very important to provide “modern” web-based services
• Anthropological research done prior to developing Summon system.
• Main goal: is to create a clear and compelling starting place for search
• Summon built on the same type of infrastructure as Google, etc. Built to scale.
• Normalized metadata => unified index => holdings/rights => relevance ranked results => API => user interface
• Simple, easy, fast. Give users tools to help them refine results set.
• Supports most major IR systems.
• Includes database recommender service for individual databases.
• Provides mobile app.
• http://serialssolutions.com/summon

Questions:

• Importance of currency of coverage? One measure of the quality of discovery application.
• Currently no ” did you mean” in Summon
• UniSA: link resolver needs improvement, now that people can discover the stuff, they get frustrated when they can’t get to the full-text content due to weakness in the link resolver.
• Summon supports explicit boolean searches.