Tag: library camp

The anti-social catalogue – at Library Camp Leeds

On Saturday 26th May I attended Library Camp Leeds (libcampLS), a regional library unconference hosted by Leeds City Libraries. The conference took place on a beautiful sunny day at Horsforth library.

In a masterful move by the organizers we decamped to nearby Hall Park for the afternoon sessions which meant the session I had pitched on library catalogues took place ‘en plein air’. The unconference style made this easy to accomodate though there were some downsides, notably a dog that turned up and dug into Dace‘s salty cheese sticks just as the session was getting started…

Dog joining in with ‘cake camp’, photographed by Dace Udre, license CC-BY-NC.

The anti-social catalogue

Session underway, photographed by Kev Campbell-Wright, license CC-BY-NC-SA.

What is the next-gen library catalogue?

I opened by outlining what we mean by a “discovery interface” or “next-generation library catalogue” to give us some grounding. Then I gave a quick outline of the failure of current library systems to be “social”, that is, how they don’t facilitate social interactions.

I paraphrased from Sharon Yang and Melissa Hoffman’s article (2011) surveying library catalogues. I’ll repeat this below as I know it’ll come in handy in future. What makes something a next-generation catalogue isn’t very well-defined but we can say such a system will have many of these features, whereas traditional catalogues have few:

  • They provide a single point of searching across multiple library resources including the local bibliographic database, journal articles, and other materials.
  • The Web interface is modern and its design reflects that that found in Web search and ecommerce sites rather than traditional bibliographic retrieval systems.
  • They favour keyword searching via a single search box.
  • They feature faceted navigation to rework or limit search results.
  • They are tolerant of user error and provide “Did you mean…?” suggestions.
  • They feature enriched content drawn from sources outside the library such as book jackets, reviews, and summaries.
  • They feature user-generated content such as reviews and tagging.
  • They feature recommendations or suggestions for related material, which may be based on information held in the library system (e.g. circulation data) or elsewhere.
  • They feature some kind of social networking integration to allow for easier sharing and reuse of library records and data on these Web sites.
  • To facilitate this sharing, records have stable persistent links or permalinks.

What are the problems?

Some of the features mentioned above are social in nature, including user-generated content such as tagging and reviews, recommenders built from using circulation data, and integration of social networking sites. So “next-generation” implies a suite of features that include some social features, but not everything next-generation is such a social feature. Furthermore the underlying library management system and metadata are not likely to be too supportive of these features.

In practise social features like tagging and reviews haven’t really taken off in libraries and those of us using these tend to find low use among our customers. This is certainly my experience with tagging, enabled on our Encore catalogue at Senate House Libraries. It is not enough to have a reasonably large bibliographic database and a reasonably large membership then turn on tagging and expect something – the magic – to happen.

I do not think library catalogues are perceived as a social destination by our readers. However I think what prevents this is not that there is no wish by readers to interact in this way using our systems, but that we’re only just starting to make a serious effort to build features that encourage genuine social interaction.

This is what I mean by current catalogues being anti-social. However, I did like this alternative definition from Gaz:

Discussion

Note: attributions below are based on my notes from the day. If I’ve made a mistake please let me know.

The conversation was lively and varied and I was really pleased to facilitate a session where so many present wanted to contribute.

There was a general feeling the current technology isn’t there yet and implementation of social features on our catalogues do not encourage social interaction.

Luke explained catalogues built by vendors reflect the small marketplace offered by libraries and that technology in libraries tends to be quite far behind leading edge. He described the development of VuFind for discovery based on frustration with software supplier offerings – but one that required a willingness to invest in staff resource to develop and implement VuFind. This was done at Swansea University, Swansea Metropolitan University, and Trinity Saint David as a project – SWWHEP.

Luke mentioned something I have heard as a common objection to user-generated content in catalogues, the fear that students will abuse it and tag books with swearwords and so on. There was a similar concern raised that books written by academic staff might be rated down by students (with a cheeky suggestion added – “They should write better books”). Luke pointed out this has not proved a problem on the Swansea iFind implementation of VuFind (as it hasn’t at Senate House Libraries) because the feature is simply not being used. I thought that in some ways the feature being ignored is worse than readers actively disliking it…

Sarah gave an example of a ‘paper-based Web 2.0’ (my term) implementation where library members were given a paper slip to rate or review an item – which would then be keyed into the catalogue by staff!

Several campers made the point bringing in user-generated content from outside – such as Librarything for Libraries – could make a big difference as then there’s clearly something there to start with.

It was generally agreed building features that create good social interaction requires effort, it’s not something we can easily bolt on to existing systems that aren’t designed for this from the ground up.

There was agreement with Iman‘s point that for social features to become popular there should be an incentive for the customer. The customer should get value from the interaction, or what’s the point of doing it? Alongside this it shouldn’t take huge effort or require a great deal of work to be social. The concept of gamification as a way of providing that incentive was raised here.

Several campers gave example of where libraries know great a deal of information about our readers habits and actions, and could re-use this to enhance their experience of the physical or online library. The approach to social features on the catalogue that requires least effort are those interactions that happen by you doing what you would normally do anyway. For example borrowing and returning books to generate recommendations based on circulation information.

One problem was raised about emphasising top loaning items from the collection in that this could become self-sustaining: an item remaining popular because it is on that list. (At this point I wondered that I probably couldn’t make our top-loaning author Michel Foucault any more popular if I tried…)

Liz made a thoughtful point that the use of technology is important, that is how it enables us to fulfil the mission of the organization (the library, the university). We should concentrate on what’s relevant for our organizations. So: we need to be clear what we’re trying to achieve with these features and what the point of it all is. Technology used poorly for its own sake had already been raised, an example given being linking to an ebook record from the catalogue using a QR code: if you’re already online looking at the catalogue, why not just a normal hyperlink?

Rather than limiting ourselves to what other libraries are doing we should be thinking along the lines of features employed in ecommerce systems. Spencer made the interesting point that ecommerce systems he has worked with can build a much more complete picture of user needs and wishes with a view to offering them a tailored online experience. This is years ahead of anything libraries currently do.

Some more fundamental problems were raised about technology and libraries.

Linsey raised the idea of ’embarrassing IT’, that is IT provision that’s so bad we as information professionals are ashamed to offer it. Alison said the technology needs to be there to support new catalogues, or our staff and customers simply can’t make the best use of them. An example given by the group was of an older catalogue remaining popular versus a next-generation system because it’s faster to use on outdated computers provided by the library.

These problems aren’t minor. Feedback from the group was that our Web presence and user experience of our Web sites really influences users’ perception of our organizations. There’s a real need for us to do this well, not half-heartedly.

Acknowledgment

My thanks to Natalie Pollecutt at the Wellcome Library for helpful discussion about the concept of the ‘social catalogue’ ahead of libcampLS.

References

Yang, S.Q. and Hofmann, M.A. (2011). ‘Next generation or current generation?: a study of the OPACs of 260 academic libraries in the USA and Canada’, Library Hi Tech, 29 (2), pp. 266-300. doi:10.1108/07378831111138170

Grouse about your next-generation catalogue – LibCamp@Brunel

A journey to the the wild wild west (of London)

On Saturday 28th January I attended LibCamp@Brunel, a library unconference generously hosted by the library at Brunel University in Uxbridge. I’d not been this far west in London as a destination before and on arriving I was pleased to recognise the tube station at Uxbridge as one of Charles Holden’s designs, which I took as a good omen for the day.

At the opening introduction and pitching, I pitched a session about staff perception versus library user perception of  next-generation library catalogues. As the unconference attendees were by and large library workers, I also wanted to invite everyone to come and grouse about problems they’d had with these systems. And let’s be honest, “Grouse about your next-gen catalogue” is going to be fun.

I had modest expectations for this session but it was very well attended, so much so our allotted space was too small and we had to move somewhere roomier. As I was facilitating I couldn’t live-tweet the session and following a few requests from people who couldn’t attend I decided to expand on the points made to give you a flavour of the discussion.

Perceptions of the catalogue

For some time I’ve been trying to understand problems readers have with the catalogue, and had wondered if it was possible to generalise this to talk about staff versus reader perception of Encore and next-generation systems. I hoped we could work towards this in discussion. As well as Encore, Aquabrowser, VUfind, and Summon were mentioned in discussion.

We’ve come a long way. I expected I would have to define next-generation catalogue in the session, but I was delighted when one of the graduate trainees present explained what I call next-gen was simply what she expected from a normal library catalogue. I had to give a really quick potted history of four generations of catalogue interfaces. (This is how to make your systems librarian feel old…)

I explained our experience of implementing Innovative Interfaces Encore at Senate House Library, and particularly how different I have found the perspectives of the library staff versus our readers. To be clear, my colleagues were almost entirely positive towards the new catalogue. I was pushing at an open door implementing a catalogue that offers a much better experience to readers used to using modern Web sites compared with the previous catalogue, relatively little changed since the 2000s.

However, I think it’s important to answer criticism and deal with objections as there could easily be problems I’d overlooked, and there’s a need to have these arguments as one step in bringing people with you.

Andrew, you can’t implement without feature x…

In the early days pre-implementation I heard various objections to Encore along the lines of it being feature-incomplete compared with the previous catalogue. Some of my colleagues were hopeful that it would be possible to put off implementing Encore on this basis: we should wait until the next release, or the next-plus-one release, where these issues would be resolved…

It is correct that the new catalogue:

  • Doesn’t generate any left-to-right phrase indexes as our old catalogue did. Everything is indexed as keywords.
  • Doesn’t deal with classmarks for most of our multitude of classification schemes at all. At all. It doesn’t index them as classmarks and doesn’t allow you to browse by classmark.
  • Has fewer options for presenting a ‘scoped’ view of the catalogue limited to just a particular library or collection.
  • In the version we launched with, didn’t offer an advanced search with pre-limits and didn’t support boolean operators at all. (This has been added since.)

Having already done some user testing of the new catalogue I was reasonably confident none of the missing features were a show-stopper for implementation. If there were problems for some readers, we had a simple solution: allow everyone to continue using the old catalogue in parallel to the old one.

One of the Library Campers had pointed out in advanced this is an unusual approach. I explained further in discussion this was partly by necessity as the ‘patron’ features – the ability to log in to view your loans, place a reservation and renew loans – were still based in the old catalogue anyway.

I was asked about how we make sure readers find and use Encore. To drive reader uptake of the new catalogue I wanted to offer Encore as the default option on that places that really matter to us – on the Senate House Library homepage and on the old catalogue homepage. The latter uses some JavaScript to redirect your search depending on what options you select, but if you keep the default ‘Quick Search’ you get Encore. It was important to me that by following the path of least resistance readers would end up with the new catalogue.

I have said before and I stand by it: if you want to buy and implement a new system you should have the courage in your convictions and implement it properly. It amazes me to see libraries that offer their new discovery interfaces as an “alternative search” that can be ignored, or that requires special effort to find and use. I do see the value in doing this during a public beta test or preview, as the British Library did with Primo (branded as Explore the British Library), but absolutely not when you’ve made it live.

As of January 2012 we see slightly more use of the new catalogue in terms of visits, ~56% of the combined total based on Google Analytics data (I said ~50% based on data from Q4 2011 in the session). I consider this a reasonable start.

In the eight months since going live with the new catalogue several types of problem have emerged with Encore.

Longer term: how staff use the catalogue

It’s surprised me how many unusual uses of the old catalogue interface our staff have built up over time and the extent to which the catalogue has taken on functions I wouldn’t expect. For example, making use of the way classmarks are indexed to produce a list of everything from a particular classmark, particularly useful for Special Collections where the classmark might be used to describe what collection something is in. Or a need to produce a list that represents everything related to some sub-set of our catalogue – that is, a search strategy that you can be confident represents 100% true positives!

Much of this has been presented to me in good humour in a playful spirit of showing me how Encore can be “beaten” by a particular use case.

There are uses of the old catalogue that are simply impossible in the Encore catalogue, but my answer is first they don’t tend to represent realistic use cases our readers make, second they can more or less easily be moved to the staff client for our library system. Apart from Encore, Katharine Schopflin and Graham Seaman discussed how next-generation systems can have problems with known item searching and in attempting to present a search interface biased towards too much towards browsing and subject searching can be actively unhelpful when you have specific items in mind. I explained I think Encore is quite good for known item search, in particular the way it prioritises exact hits from MARC field 245 $a, my favourite examples are journals like Text and Agenda.

Generally I don’t think we should aim every discovery tool only at our most expert users, information professionals with great experience with our collections, when they have working alternatives available. I explained in response to a question there is no staff-specific view of Encore if you sign in using a staff account. I think this is right and proper from a “dogfooding” point of view, but I confess I daydream about a catalogue that is this flexible enough to offer a different interfaces with different features for novice to expert as required…

Longer term: you need to sort out your metadata

It’s become a truism that because next-generation systems make better use of our bibliographic data they force us to sort out existing problems with our metadata. We’ve certainly found our fair share of these problems since launching Encore, but not all of them are fixable.

The first we’ve tried to address is the way different types of material were described in our catalogue, the combination of print monographs (er, books) and print periodicals (um, journals) into a single material type termed “printed material”. Cue amused smiles from the Library Campers! Since then we’ve split them into books and journals as I explain on a blog post on our Encore blog – ‘Helping you find print journals more easily’.

The general problem is Encore can only act on the metadata it has available, but realistically you won’t always have time and money to do the work required to make it good. Encore does useful things like provide facets based on geographical names in your subject headings, or dates of publication, or languages. The problem is the data being missing or coded ‘undetermined’.

We know there are some very good items in our collection that are not findable during subject searching by readers because they have a record that’s not very good. Graham Seaman mentioned a problem in Summon in the way dates can be described in different ways, understandable by humans but not machines. For example you could refer to things from the same time period as ’16th century’, ‘1500–1525’, or ‘Renaissance’ and so miss out on relevant items.

These are problems that existed with our old catalogue but which the next-generation catalogue brings into sharper relief.

Encouraging serendipitous discovery in library catalogues

I’ve been thinking about serendipitous discovery in library catalogues following discussion in Adrienne Cooper’s cataloguing and classification session at Library Camp. I am also much indebted to Owen Stephens for continued discussion about this over lunch.

If you’re unsure about this subject, I recommend Elizabeth Watson’s masters dissertation on serendipity in LIS (PDF). Read it now!

I think the previous and current generations of library catalogues are not supportive enough – or at all in many cases – of serendipitous discovery while browsing. During my masters interviews I found readers at Senate House Library loved that style of discovery far, far beyond what I expected and were eager to talk about their experiences in our library. No-one mentioned using the catalogue for such a thing.

For example:

  • Using the classification to browse nearby shelves, the initial catalogue search used as a rough indication of where to start “proper” browsing.
  • Chancing upon things in unrelated areas of the library. Just wander in and see what’s there. Moving stock around for our refurbishment actually worked in favour of this!
  • Opening a book on the reshelving area. The argument is previous borrowing is some indication of usefulness.
  • Journals too: I know of a prof. who prefers print journals because you can flick through a current issue and chance on unexpected things.

Sadly I had nowhere near enough words available in the dissertation to expand on this and it was somewhat off-topic anyway.

Katie Birkwood said, commenting on a post at the “What’s the point?” cataloguing blog:

“I had a thought recently, sort of on the back of mentions of ‘serendipty’ of discovery […] what if all or some of this perceived ‘serendipty’ is nothing of the kind, but is instead the result of careful classification?”

I think that’s true, and moreover I think the major benefit of classifying items rather than just bunging them on the shelf and numbering them. I think we lose something in relegating a lot of stock to closed stores as this style of discovery diminishes too.

It’s an unsolved problem to support serendipitous discovery online. In theory an online catalogue should be good at this because it isn’t really limited by space and includes the possibility of hyperlinking things together…

There have been attempts to replicate the experience of print items. For example a “shelf browse” type of view – but that’s missing the obvious: you can’t pick the thing up and flip through it, plus you limit yourself to the view of the collection imposed by your classification, as good as it is, you’re not encouraging random connections.

I would love to see a library catalogue with some awareness of what those funny numbers and letters in classmarks actually mean. Offering a browse view of classmarks in a list is one thing, and useful for power users, but what a step forward if the catalogue had some understand of what say 303.48330904 means and how that could be related to other classes.

An approach I find very interesting is recommender systems. This was discussed in Helen Harrop’s and Dave Pattern’s session on the same at Library Camp where Dave linked them to serendipity  – a recommender being one of the ways of reproducing the ‘joy’ of accidental discovery online. Helen argued there is a wealth of data in library management systems that could be used to create these connections, the basic idea being “People who borrowed X also borrowed Y” or similar.

I remember being very impressed with the LibraryThing for Libraries recommender when I first saw it make a connection between Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds and a book on Dutch tulips, the former having a chapter unknown to me about the tulip craze. Years on I just take that sort of thing for granted on LibraryThing, but relatively few academic libraries have started using recommenders in earnest.

This is one reason why I’ve made ‘patron reading history’ opt-out in our catalogue for the academic year just started.

References

Watson, E.A. (2008) Going fishing: serendipity in library and information science. Unpublished MS dissertation. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [Online]. Available at: https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/masters_papers/b5644w56s