My previous post was getting a bit long, so here, in its own entry, is the scoop on Google Scholar and SFX.

Roy Tennant gave a presentation called “Is Metasearch Dead?” Tennant says no, and he highlighted some of the weak points of Google Scholar. Coverage and timeliness are two of the big issues, as are the lack of metadata and sophisticated search features. Nevertheless Tennant is very glad to see Google working with libraries.

Anurag Acharya (AKA Mr. Google Scholar), the principal engineer of GS, spoke later in the day. According to Acharya, GS’s goal is to be a single place for all scholarly material in all research areas, sources, and languages. Some of the products/platforms covered are: “all major publishers except Elsevier and ACS,” HighWire, Allen Press, MetaPress, Atypon, Ingenta, Muse, and public A&I databases such as PubMed. He admitted that there is a timeliness issue that they are working to address.

In addition to the usual OpenURL set up, Google requires libraries to provide a holdings file so that it can add more prominent links for those items that a library has in full text. This has been a hot topic of discussion among librarians since Google added the OpenURL capability. Acharya clarified what holdings information Google requires for sites that want OpenURL enabled. Only coverage information is sent to Google, with no indication of who the title is licensed from. For example, Google would see that we have coverage of Callaloo from 2002 to the present, but they would not know whether that coverage was through ProQuest, Muse, etc. The holdings file is automatically produced by SFX for libraries that opt-in and is crawled weekly by Google. Google hopes to crawl this file more frequently in the future.

During beta testing, Google tested OpenURL with both 1 link and 2 links, and saw a dramatic increase in sustained usage when they included both links. He believes the added prominence of the full-text link is not enough to explain the sustained usage over time.

Acharya pointed out two ways in which GS departs from Google’s normal MO: 1) It provides links to content it has not crawled (because the content isn’t freely accessible) 2) It allows libraries control over how the OpenURL links are labeled on the page. He hopes that just as Google has moved outside its comfort zone, libraries will be willing to move outside their comfort zone and try Google’s way of providing links.

Acharya believes Google will support GS for the “foreseeable future” without “monetization.” He believes the most likely way Google would try to make money is through ads.

John Regazzi’s presentation, “The Battle for Mindshare,” was much cited at the conference as a reason libraries should seriously consider working with Google. In a survey Regazzi conducted, scientists named Google, Yahoo!, and PubMed, while librarians named ScienceDirect, WOS, and Medline, as the top 3 online scientific search resources they used or were aware of. Slide twenty shows the sobering numbers.

Verde workshop: Lots of good information, much more detailed demo than what ExL showed on campus a few months ago. ExL has tried to stay as close as possible to the DLF specs. The database can be populated with data from SFX, and includes links between both SFX and Aleph (v. 16 & 17), with plans to add linking with MetaLib in the future. The product is still in beta testing, but looks quite promising.

MetaLib interface: There were several presentations related to various aspects of the MetaLib interface. The word is that customization is both necessary and difficult. Usability tests at three different universities made staff aware of difficulties with the default interface, but most institutions that customize have experienced or expect to experience considerable difficulty with patches and upgrades. Carla Lillvik gave a presentation about Harvard’s customizations and their decision-making process. Their MetaLib installation will go live on June 30.

There is much lobbying of ExL all around for better default code and an easier upgrade path, which should not come as a surprise to Aleph customers.

SFX Innovations: Several interesting presentations were given on what people are doing with SFX. One that drew lots of cheers from the audience was David Walker’s inclusion of dynamic print availability (based on holdings rather than just ISSN, which is what we have currently) and a “How Do I Find It?” feature that maps out the print location and tells the user how to get there based on his or her IP address! Another very interesting tool is the Wag the Dog Web Localizer, which not only adds SFX links to Google Scholar, but also adds proxy information to links and checks for holdings in the local catalog.

Wikipedia has an entry for libraries that lend tools, two of which are in Upstate NY. Interesting idea, and interesting to see the sorts of entries being written for Wikipedia that would never be found in a traditional encyclopedia.

Via the MAKE blog.

Cross-Provider Search

Jenny Walker of Ex Libris drew a distinction between federated searching (just in case) and metasearch (just in time). Most of her presentation concerned the developments of the NISO Metasearch Initiative, which is working “to identify, develop, and frame the standards and other common understandings that are needed to enable an efficient and robust information environment.” Three task groups are working on the following areas: authentication/authorization, collection description, and search and retrieval. More about the NISO Metasearch Initiative can be found at www.lib.ncsu.edu/niso-mi.

Amy Brand of CrossRef discussed the CrossRef Search pilot, which has been developing since 2002. After working with CrossRef to develop CrossRef Search, Google launched Google Scholar to the surprise of CrossRef and affiliated publishers. As a result, the future of CrossRef Search is somewhat uncertain right now. Brand reviewed Google Scholar and its OpenURL development. There are mixed feelings about Google among publishers–Google drives 20-30% of traffic to publisher sites and Google Print may be a good marketing tool. But publishers are concerned about loss of publisher control (e.g. linking to an article in a repository instead of or in addition to the authorized version of an article) and the repurposing of copyrighted material. Based on recent patent applications filed by Google there is speculation that Google wants to be an e-commerce provider for article purchase.

Institutional Repositories

Carol Hixson of University of Oregon described the University Libraries’ experiences with DSpace. Her presentation is available in DSpace at https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/dspace/handle/1794/843 and includes a number of useful links to materials on repositories and open access.

Some points

• buy-in and interest was slow to develop
• faculty are very concerned about copyright
• clear policies are necessary
• need to do a lot of marketing and education

Painting America Purple: Media Democracy and the Red/Blue Divide

Leif Utne, Associate Editor of Utne Magazine, spoke about the role of the media in overcoming the political divide in the US. The media is not just an objective news provider, but reflects communities back to themselves. It can introduce readers/viewers/listeners to each other, provide opportunities to find common ground, and foster “conversational literacy.”

Utne proposed reasons why much of the media currently divides rather than unites: controversy sells, corporate consolidation, more ads/less program time, eroding journalistic standards. He then reviewed a number of media outlets and projects working to promote conversation, including Utne Magazine’s own salons and Cafe Utne, Let’s Talk America, Council for Excellence in Government, the BothAnd Project, the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, and the Co-Intelligence Institute. He also pointed out the September Project, which fosters civic events in libraries on September 11. (Unfortunately I don’t have these URLs but they should be easily accessible via Google.)

Using OpenURL in Creative Ways

• capture citation service that allows people to copy and paste citations
• direct export into EndNote
• use of OpenURLs for e-reserves links
• Citation Linker tutorials with screen capture software
• desire to integrate into course management software (nobody actually doing this yet)

Examining Workflows and Redefining Roles

• need to review serials/acquisitions in light of move to electronic environment
• reviewed data from ILS and compared to workload distribution among staff
• stopped claiming when planned to move to e-only anyway
• too much time spent on missing print issues that were available online
• did not stop check-in!

AACR3

• very much work in progress
• actually not AACR3, but entirely new work: “Resource Description and Access”
• desire to be more responsive to user needs, less print-oriented
• format independent
• looking at structure (not content) of other metadata standards for guidance
• speaker: “any of what I tell you may change!”
• publication planned for 2008

Anyone who’s not a librarian must be a little confused by the drink specials at the Minneapolis Hilton tonight:

Kardex Kooler
Microform Mojito
RLG Razzini
Verso Lemonade
Mini-Bib Margarita

Last Friday I attended a day-long workshop by Jane Dysart and Stephen Abram at the Broome County Public Library. (It was called a workshop, but it was actually more like riding down Lincoln Drive in a car going 100 mph.)

Dysart provided tips for reviewing library services and planning for new technologies. She recommended developing a mindset that includes technology as an enabler rather than as the central focus of our energies, and she discussed the importance of looking around us–not just at other libraries, but at gaming, sports, and bookstores, among others. She diagrammed a “service design process” that starts with a consideration of why we exist and what our clients want.

Abrams reviewed a wide variety of current and emerging technologies. These include visualization tools and other non-text search engines, the expansion of P2P, converging devices (e.g. phone/mp3 player/text messaging/photo display/web access), Google initiatives, and web-based collaborative tools.

More resources from both speakers are available at Dysart & Jones Associates and Stephen Abram’s page at Sirsi.

I learned last weekend that those “Fog Area” signs on the Interstate are not very helpful. Either it’s foggy or it’s not, and by the time you see the sign you know what you’re dealing with (in our case about 50 miles of thick, soupy fog).

The web redesign project has me thinking about labels and navigation. Although it’s important to tell people where they are and what’s going on there, it seems a thornier issue to give people good guideposts to get them where they want to be. I just got a book on information architecture in the hopes of applying the experts’ advice to this conundrum (and a lot of other things)–I just haven’t had time to read it yet.

I’m a sucker for quizzes. This one is not really accurate, except the last two lines, but it’s fun to be told you have a really high IQ based on your favorite color.

Never fear, in the near future I will try to post something more meaningful!

Having finished my work for the day, I decided to explore Photoshop filters a little:

He’s not really possessed…