INSTG004

Discovery at the University of LondonAndrew PreaterAssociate DirectorSenate House Libraries, University of London

10:00 – 11:00 Discovery and library systems

11:30 – 13:00 Practical: OPAC 2.0 and discovery

Schedule

Role of the systems librarian

Discovery

Next-gen catalog(ue)

OPAC 2.0

Discovery layer / engine

Terminology

Keene, C. (2011) 'Discovery services', Serials, 24 (2) pp. Metapress [Online]. DOI: 10.1629/24193 (Accessed: 10 November 2013).

Discovery at Senate House Libraries

Breeding, M. (2010). Next-gen library catalogs. London: Facet

Positioned as default cataloguehttp://www.senatehouselibrary.ac.uk

Kuali OLE

VuFindfind.senatehouselibrary.ac.uk

Research Understand it before deploying it

Talja, S. Tuominen, K. and Savolainen, R. (2004) ‘“Isms” in information science: constructivism, collectivism and constructionism’, Journal of Documentation, 61 (1), pp. 79-101 Emerald [Online]. DOI: 10.1108/00220410510578023 (Accessed: 10 November 2013).

Catalogues are websites

Strongly contrasting views of discovery

Influence from using web search

“Web-like” behaviour examples include:

• Scanning Web pages, concentrating on titles and skim-reading• Iterative searching based on skim reading over multiple reworked

search queries• Short queries, characterised by use of a few keywords• A tendency not to look beyond the first page of search results• Trust in search relevancy ranking• A query is seen as part of an ongoing process• Expectation of tolerance to small errors or typos based on ‘Did

you mean...?’ suggestions• “Satisficing” behavior, a tendency to make do with results or

information that seems good enough rather than search exhaustively

By ‘library catalogue-like’ we mean behaviours associated with traditional information retrieval systems including:

• More complex search queries including use of boolean operators• Formulation of queries to meet an ‘approved’ format of the

library bibliographic record, such as searching by author’s last name first.

• A query is seen as a form that should be submitted to get a desired correct result, rather than a process

• Use of pre-limits, such as an index or limit to part of the library collection to control what is searched

• Browsing of the catalogue using linking generated in catalogue records such as subject headings

• Requirement to avoid or correct typos or other errors due to inherent intolerance of the system

Discovery encourages this behaviour?

Affective aspects of catalogue use

Walter, A. and Spool, J.M. (2011). Designing for emotion. New York, NY: A Book Apart.

The staff view

Preater, A. (2013) ‘Discovery at Senate House Libraries: staff focus groups', Ginformation Systems, 14 May. Available at: http://preater.com/x/q (Accessed: 10 November 2013).

‘The Moon on a Stick’, by Flickr user Simon Grieg. License CC-BY-NC-SA. http://flic.kr/p/5wzWZa

One approach won’t suit everyone

back to…

Kuali OLE

Metadata Optimization

Preater, A. (2012) 'Grouse about your next-generation catalogue – LibCamp@Brunel', Ginformation Systems, 29 January. Available at: http://preater.com/x/c (Accessed: 10 November 2013).

Analysis using VuFind

98,994 country of publication4,122 language codes2,133 date codes

@preaterandrew.preater@london.ac.uk

www.preater.com