Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference

This past March Alexis and I were selected to present at ER&L on our federated searching research. It was an honor to be a part of this inagural conference. I was inspired by the quality of presentations and discourse by not only the presenters but the attendees. This was the first time I had been involved with presenting that involved an online element. Participants were given access to Moodle to post questions and review powerp0ints as well as the actual presentation. I thought I would share this permanent link just released by Georgia Tech's Institutional Repository. It allows you to relive that presentation. I hope that our infomration on federated searching sparks more interest and allows the library field to start driving this discussion instead of letting the vendors - mostly IT - drive it.
http://hdl.handle.net/1853/10170


Evolution of a Librarian

I want to thank Alexis, for bringing me kicking and screaming into the land of blogs. Most people that I know are perplexed by that statement because I am a Systems Librarian, IT professional, software trainer, and currently a department head for both IT and Instructional Media services at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. But it is true that I have been reluctant to enter the world of blogging, online journals, or the social communities of the 21st century. Perhaps a little more perspective from whence I come...

I started in the world of Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) back in the mid-80's. I was on an interactive CHAT system back in 1986. I had my 1st internet account in 1988. I had my first Website (not web page but web SITE) in 1993 when Mosaic was just getting started. I presented the 1st hands-on workshop at Internet World and Computers in Libraries on "How to Create Your Own Homepage" back in 1994, 1995 respectively. Since then, I've been in and out of both the Library Systems world and the software training world. I love using and teaching the technology to further the lives of others.

Book Analysis Tools

I do collection development, so I'm always interested in tools that will help me evaluate what I have or don't have. One of the new tools soon to be available to academic libraries is Bowker's Book Analysis System. You must subscribe to the Books in Print database to use this tool. It will compare your library's holdings to ACRL's Resources for College Libraries (which is the update to Books for College Libraries and which will also be available in print and database formats). I've been able to look at the public library version and like what I've seen so far. Not only does it give you results by subject, but you can also view them by call number. You also have many options for limiters, such as award winners, or you can just run the analysis without limiters and take it by sujbect area. While it's Dewey for the public library product, Library of Congress call numbers will be available for the academic product.

I'm comparing this a bit to OCLC's WorldCat Collection Analysis system, which my library subscribes to, and which at times isn't as intuitive as the Bowker product appears to be (remember, I haven't seen the academic version yet). You must have holdings in WorldCat and subscribe to WorldCat. WorldCat Collection Analysis now runs comparisons against Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic Titles, titles reviewed in Booklist , and Books for College Libraries (1988 ed.). Not sure if they'll upgrade this to the upcoming Resource for College Libraries or not.

WorldCat Collection Analysis also allows you to set up comparison groups, which could be particularly useful when doing accreditation reports for departments. I'm not sure about the Bowker product, but the unfortunate thing about WorldCat Collection Analysis is that a lot of the set up, i.e. which title list to compare to, which schools or institutions to compare to, is all done in the Administration module for WordCat as a whole. Advanced search does allow quite a bit of latitude for limiting the search, but you can't view the results by call number, just by subject heading.

Administration is also a bit awkward. It seems (as far as I can tell), that you can't get to the set-up from the module, which has proved frustrating to me. Maybe not to others. I've finally signed up for their e-mail, but I was a bit puzzled that as the point of contact for our purchase of the WorldCat Collection Analysis, I wasn't automatically put on some list to get product updates. I've found it frustrating to keep up with what they are doing; apparently enhancements are being done on a monthly basis, but unless you get the e-mail or make a habit of going into the admin module or visiting the website, you'll never know. I know it's a powerful tool - I've seen others show it. But, keeping up with it has been hard and it many ways, it's not intuitive. Still, I'm forging ahead because I think this will be an invaluable tool in analyzing my collection.


technorati tags: collection development book analysis

Up and running

Last fall a fellow librarian and I were asked to do a session at the Arkansas Library Association on federated searching. Just barely knowing what it was at the time, we hesitated. After some thought, we decided it would be a good way to learn about federated searching and agreed to do the session. In the beginning, the thought was "this is not good" and "it's too limited" and that was basically how we approached it.

We ended up having a ball doing the research and even got to test a couple of the available products. We were "converted." We definitely see a use (need) for this product, especially for undergraduate students (we're both academic librarians). Since then, every time we hear about a new federated search product or updates to an existing one, we're right there checking it out.

Which, in a round about way, brings us to the ALA conference. This year was my first time to attend ALA. Louisiana is my home state, so I was happy that my first ALA conference was also supporting New Orleans. I did even manage to throw in some site seeing. The sessions were good as were the Exhibits.

I have yet to see a federated search engine that I didn't think was cool. I've seen and played with CentralSearch by SerialsSolutions, which will incorprate Vivisimo's technology, providing clustered results and with Multi-Search by CSA. At conference I was able to look at several others that were also very cool: I looked at Ebsco's WebFeat Express (pretty nice); at Vubis' VSpaces, which looks to be very cool and will include an OpenURL resolver, and at Innovative Interfaces MetaFind, which will morph into something more when they launch Encore, which looked to also be very cool. I'll be interested to see it when they're ready to go.

Most federated searching products will do the same thing - allow for subject groupings; incorporate web resources, library opacs, subscription databases; and show where the results are coming from (a feature we look for). Where you'll see differences is in appearance (how the interface looks); administration (who does it - you or the vendor); pricing (most do it by the number of connectors, where a connector can be a database, a search engine, a library, etc.), and fields search. When federated search engines first emerged, what fields they searched were limited. Now, we're seeing where abstracts and subject fields can be searched in addition to author, title, keyword. In short, what can be searched is improving by leaps and bounds.

We're still looking and will post what we find.


technorati tags: federated search