From metasearch to metaservices

David WalkerCalifornia State University

Introduction

Part philosophy What are we trying to do w/ metasearch? Where are the problems? How might we do it better?

Part practical Waxing philosophical is not enough! What can we do now with the tech we

have?

Rethinking metasearch?

We’ve been at it long enough now Google Scholar Newer systems

Next-generation catalogs? Enterprise search? Discovery layers?

New metasearch models

Metalib X-Server Design your own interface Incorporate other systems and data Experiment!

Xerxes Project Developed by CSU and John Hopkins Implemented at 20+ universities

X-Server

Metalib

Xerxes

KB

DBPHP / XSLT / MySQL

What are we trying to accomplish?

“We offer a fragmented set of systems to search for published information . . . each with very different tools for identifying and obtaining materials. For the user, these distinctions are arbitrary.” – UC Bib Serv Taskforce

Overview of the literature

1990-1999“Is There a Chance for a Standardized User

Interface?” –Fletcher

2000-2004 “Trumping Google? . . .” –Luther “Talking about a Revolution? . . . ” –Nicholas “The Answer to all of our Problems? . . .” –

Groenewegen “The Right Solution . . .” –Tennant

Overview of the literature

2004-2008 “Is Metasearching Dead?” –Tennant “Metasearching: Not as Good as We'd Like

It” –NLAQ “Why Librarians Hate Metasearch” –McHale “Plotting a New Course for Metasearch” –

Breeding

Arguing about metasearch

“[C]ross-database search tools . . . are the correct solution for unifying access to a variety of information resources.” –Roy Tennant

“Metasearching, then, is a step backward, a way of avoiding the learning process.” – William Frost

“[M]etasearch … cannot stand up to search systems based on centralized indexes” –Marshall Breeding

“Part of me keeps hoping [metasearch] will go away, but nope, it's still there.” – Andrew Pace

Arguing about metasearch

Broadcast argument (pro)“You can search multiple databases simultaneously!”

Nativist argument (anti)“The search is not advanced enough!”

Immature technology argument (anti)“The search is too slow!”“Google Scholar is faster!”

Isn’t it ironic?

Some librarians dislike metasearch because it is too

much like Google; others because it is not enough like

Google.

Usage statistics

SFX as a proxy measure? Query # 2: Requests by source (SID) Not all databases or clicks Apples-to-apples comparison

Example Cal State campuses Cal State Fullerton – general – 38,000

students Cal Poly – science + engineering – 20,000

students Sonoma State – liberal arts – 8,500 students

Usage statistics

Fullerton Native: 297,602 (54%) Xerxes: 252,238 (45%) Google: 5,340 (1%)

Cal Poly Native: 95,885 (47%) Xerxes: 92,534 (46%) Google: 13,697 (7%)

Sonoma Native: 22,654

(48%) Xerxes: 22,275

(48%) Google: 1,944

(4%)Native: 416,141 52%

Xerxes: 367,047 46%

Google: 20,98 3%

Isn’t it ironic?

Usage of Google Scholar may

depend in large part on whether

librarians promote it or not!

Usability studies

UniversitiesBoston College –BYU – Carnegie Mellon – Maryland – Mississippi – Northwestern – Oregon State – Rochester – Texas A & M –Colorado, Denver –California, Santa Cruz

SystemsMetalib – Encompass – Serials Solutions – Webfeat – LibraryFind

Usability studies

70% of the students in BYU study preferred metasearch over native interfaces

“[B]oth [metasearch and searching native interfaces individually] produce citation sets of similar quality” – BYU

“Graduate students and faculty . . . all located citations they had not previously found”

–Texas A&M

On search times

“Eight [out of 18] students measured the speed of the search processing as reasonable and only five found the system too slow.” –Maryland

“Users are willing to wait as long as they think that they will get useful results. Their perceptions of time depend on this belief.” –Santa Cruz

“When people accomplish what they set out to do on a site, they perceive that site to be fast . . . If people can't find what they want on a site, they will regard the site as a waste of time (and slow).” – Perfetti, Landesman

On the interface

“I found that both were not very user friendly.” – BYU Student

“[Non-federated search] lent itself to more abstracts . . . With [federated search] I was relying more on the title which can sometimes be misleading.” –BYU Student

“I would have to search through every single one of these to find which one is a scholarly article and which one is just a newspaper article.” – Maryland Student

Broadening our goals

“[T]he point of federated searching is to make searching as simple as possible” –Cervone

Is it all about search? What happens before you search? What happens after you search? Re-search is more than just

searching

Selecting the right resources

“Nothing slows the user's scanning momentum more than encountering results that are irrelevant . . . many users view it as a digital equivalent of Tourette's Syndrome, where the system just spits out random items, unrelated to their search.”

– Jared Spool

Selecting the right resources Why not search everything?

Impractical technically Impractical presentationally

What you don’t search is equally as important as what you do search

Why metasearch systems get this wrong (Overly-) focused on the search box Defining is not the same as limiting

Once you start down the Quick Search path, forever will it

dominate your destiny.

Desperately seeking search box

“I just want a search box on the homepage.”

– Your users

First Rule of Usability? Don't Listen to Users!

What users say they do is sometimes different from what they actually do

“The Google phenomenon”?

Desperately seeking search box

“[T]here is something inherent in the site's design that causes users to choose the search engine or the links, not a hard-and-fast preference of the user”

“[U]sers often gravitated to the search engine when the links on the page didn't satisfy them in some way.”

– Jared Spool

Isn’t it ironic?

The search box dominates the

opening screens, then disappears!

Changing queries

“Nearly all students repeated their searches, changing terms or subject categories, so the interface needs to make this easy.”– Maryland

“Each new piece of information [users] encounter gives them new ideas and directions to follow and, consequently, a new conception of the query …  [T]he query itself (as well as the search terms used) is continually shifting, in part or whole.” –Bates

Services for results

Spell check Peer reviewed flag Full-text look-up Full-text linking Format Foreign language

Avoid pogosticking

“66% of purchases on [e-commerce] sites happened without any pogosticking . . . the more [users] pogosticked, the less likely the session would result in a purchase.”

“The best search results pages will prevent pogosticking by providing the relevant content before the user chooses a specific result.”

– Jared Spool

Services with results

Save and export Citation formatting Tagging, editing, and sharing Expert research help

Going back to search

Problems with broadcast searching Slow, dropped connections Lowest-common denominator searching

Problems with central indexing Not easy Requires software, hardware, money,

haggling

A middle ground?

Metasearch

Not all targets are created equal

Not all targets are created equal

Metasearch

Problems searching the catalog

Z39.50 searching not great Limited search options Browse searching not inherent in Metalib

Innovative ILS Hit counts are wrong Keyword results return results in bib id

order Not getting fixed any time soon.

WorldCat and Ebsco APIs

WorldCat API Free (to OCLC members) web service to

WorldCat Just ended pilot phase

Ebsco Integration Toolkit Free (to Ebsco customers) web service to

all Ebsco databases Available now

A-9 style Search Results Page

Catalog(s)

Acad Search

Metalib

A-9 style Psychology Search Results Page

Catalog(s)

PsycInfo Metalib

HybridSystem

Metasearch

Catalog

Main database

Other databases

From the catalog out?

Endecca VUFind Primo Encore WorldCat Local

Todd Miller, Webfeat

Library portal?

Metalib not flexible enough Interface Adding functionality Integrating with other systems

Xerxes should be Everything is XML-based Open source

Toward a services layer

Adding value beyond the native interface

Consolidation before distribution Come to the RSS presentation on Friday Saving, tagging, sharing

The interface is the system Metasearch, centrally indexed,

hybrid . . . Still need a good interface

Conclusion

“You can search multiple databases at the same time” is not a compelling enough argument

We need to focus on the whole research process , not just search

Add value and layer functionality on top of the results

Conclusion

We need an experimental platform to try new things, and an open source community to allow that to happen

xerxes.calstate.edu