There is a message floating around the net with a link to a survey about “a completely new online resource discovery service.” There is no identifying information information on the survey; obviously the entity that commissioned it wants to remain private. I, however, want to know who this organization is. (I have some questions to ask.) Think of it as a game — a treasure hunt of sorts. Speculations welcome, either publicly in the comments or privately.

The message going around says:

Subject: REMINDER: Take a library survey – you may earn a $100 Amazon voucher

If you haven’t already done so, please participate in our 15-minute web survey and be entered to win one of five $100 Amazon gift certificates.

    www.amrsurvey.com/7410

We’d like your feedback on the potential value of a completely new online resource discovery service for libraries. All you need to do is click on the link and answer our brief survey.

Winners will receive their $100 Amazon gift certificate via email by midnight September 30th 2008.

Thanks for participating!

On-Line Communications
401 S Dewey, Suite 500
Bartlesville, OK 74003

The survey itself contains a description of the entity conducting the survey and a sample screenshot of the new discovery layer being tested:

Screenshot from the Survey's Prototype Discovery Tool

ABOUT THE VENDOR

This new discovery service is offered by a major vendor that has been exclusively serving libraries for a matter of decades. This vendor has:

• Extensive expertise in large-scale hosted search
• Experience in the quality treatment of scholarly content and its metadata
• Market recognition for consistently designing interfaces with users in mind
• Excellent, long-term relationships with thousands of publishers
• Deep knowledge of library e-resources
• Trusted, longstanding reputation for superior customer service

PRICING

The exact annual subscription rate for this discovery service would depend primarily on your enrollment/FTE.

These costs are still being developed, but an initial estimate for institutions like yours is $xxx per year, plus a one-time installation fee of $xxx.

The vendor believes that the subscription cost would be offset by savings from no longer needing to have a federated search product nor any hardware or maintenance associated with it.

The e-mail was sent out through what looks like a standard commercial bulk emailer (like the kind that send out corporate newsletters and advertisements). The amrsurvey.com domain is registered to an entity called Action Market Research, so that isn’t much help. Thoughts about who is sponsoring this survey?

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.amrsurvey.com/7410 on January 28th, 2011.

In March, I gave a presentation at the NISO forum on Next Generation Discovery Tools: New Tools, Aging Standards. For those that were there, you may remember the bulk of the presentation was in the screencast tours of the functionality of 10 OPAC enhancement tools. Topping out at over 750MB, the presentation file was too big to share, but I promised to put together a combination of the presentation audio and the screencast videos in a much more manageable size. That video, along with a cleaned up version of the audio, is posted below.

For more information about the presentation, including links to the 10 tools that were demonstrated, see the previous DLTJ post on the topic. Lastly, here are some links to the downloadable form of the presentations:

• Presentation video (same as above, in Flash format, 90MB)
• Presentation audio (MP3 format, 49MB)

Thank you to the NISO staff for making the audio available.

Update

Are we building the “next generation” catalog for us (librarians) or our users? As a read a report from the Next Generation Summit Search Interface Working Group of the Orbis/Cascade Alliance, I have to wonder. Portions of this report are dated¹ other portions are timeless. In particular, this section from page 2 (emphasis added):

How do we define “next generation”?

The working group has considered what it means to create a “next generation catalog” within the context of the current Summit interface and the current definition of “next generation” as understood within the library community. However, maybe this isn’t the right question. In part, library systems have failed to even keep up with our current generation of users, with neither the library community or vendor community really understanding how a current generation catalog might function. We have ideas from looking at vendor sites and social software tools that provide tagging, faceted browsing, and user reviews, but are these really “next generation”? No, they represent current generation functionality that library systems simply have yet to assimilate into their current service offerings. It’s a dangerous confusion of vocabulary. While these services represent “next generation” services for the library community, they don’t for our users. If a simple makeover of the ILS is to be our aim, then we will continue to fail to provide services for our current generation of users. Our current library information systems are failing our users and inhibiting our users’ attempts to build communities around our services and systems.

Libraries should rectify this problem by seeking to build systems that meet the needs of this current generation, while allowing the library community to plan for and implement functionality that will be necessary within the “next generation”. In part, this is what some libraries are doing — some examples are discussed in this report. North Carolina State University’s utilization of Endeca has been lauded far and wide, but in essence, they’ve simply started to catch up with today’s current generation of users. Yet in just catching up to the current generation, they have distinguished themselves from the rest of the library community. They have placed themselves in a position to look beyond the needs of the current generation of users and focus on the services and needs of the next. At this point, few organizations, including the Alliance, can make such a claim. That, in part, is the challenge facing the Alliance and this working group as it made its assessments.

It would seem helpful to shift terminology, because in doing so we can focus more readily on the needs of our users. They aren’t looking for a “Next Generation” interface. “Next Generation” to us means “Current Generation” to our users. “Next Generation” for our users is “what have you done for me lately?” In order to meet that need, we need a platform that is “developer-friendly.” Again, from the report:

a platform that supports and encourages interaction with the system. This can take many shapes, including OAI harvesting, SRU, OpenSearch or a simple web-services-based API to allow the Alliance to take a more proactive role in developing services.

And, finally, in the report’s recommendations:

Additionally, in researching current and in-development solutions, it became clear that if the Alliance is to continue to meet the needs of its users, it will have to demand greater access to the metadata (holdings, items, bibliographic) found within the catalog. Regardless of who provides the Alliance’s next generation OPAC product, one of the deliverables that must be available as part of any solution is API or web services access to the catalog. Access at this level is important for two reasons:

1. It allows libraries to integrate and share development resources:
   The Alliance members are currently hamstrung by the closed nature of the Summit catalog. The Summit INN- Reach catalog currently only provides two methods of interaction – Z39.50 and HTML access. For developers looking to build services around the Summit catalog, the Z39.50 protocol, as implemented, is currently too limiting and expensive for production development services. All major ILS vendors but III provide their customers a web services or HTTP REST API access to their systems, allowing for continued development around the catalog. Lacking such access, the Summit catalog will continue to be marginalized within the consortium’s academic campuses as tools and services are developed that take advantage of web service friendly applications.
2. Allows for the development of library-created or user-created mashups:
   The Alliance should strive to create a resource that encourages users, libraries, and campuses to develop services around the Summit catalog. The library community has recognized that our patrons want social tools, which we tend to identify as tagging, commenting, etc. However, Web 2.0 applications like Flickr are popular because of the API access that they provide to their users as well. This access has enabled other web services, individuals, and organizations to develop different methods for exporting and utilizing the images placed within the Flickr photo archive. The Alliance should strive to make the Summit catalog open in this way, so that users and members alike are free to enhance Summit to meet individual, campus, or consortial needs.

If it is possible to sum up what we need in “next generation” systems, I haven’t seen more succinctly put than this report.

Footnotes

1. Although the report itself does not contain a date, mention of the report appears in the agenda of a March 2007 meeting of the consortium’s Summit Catalog Committee.

Below are the supplemental links for the presentation at the NISO workshop on discovery layers in Chapel Hill, NC, on March 28, 2008.

Update 20080404T1124 : Carolyn McCallum at Wake Forest University posted a great summary of day two of the NISO discovery layer forum, including an overview of my talk. Thanks, Carolyn!

Foundational Pieces

Tour of Systems

Web OPAC Enhancements

Library Thing for Libraries

Homepage

http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries/

Demo site

http://blais.claremont.edu/

Web OPAC Wrappers

SOPAC

Homepage

http://www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social/

Demo site

http://www.aadl.org/catalog/

Web OPAC Replacements

AquaBrowser

Homepage

http://www.medialab.nl/

Demo site

http://aqua.queenslibrary.org/

Encore

Homepage

http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html

Demo site

http://ukty-mt.iii.com/iii/encore/app

Primo

Homepage

http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/PrimoOverview

Demo site

http://prime2.oit.umn.edu:1701/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=TWINCITIES&reset_config=true

WorldCat Local

Homepage

http://www.oclc.org/worldcatlocal/

Demo site

http://osu.worldcat.org/

Blacklight

Homepage

http://blacklight.rubyforge.org/

Demo site

http://blacklight.betech.virginia.edu/

fac-back-opac

Homepage

http://code.google.com/p/fac-back-opac/

Demo site

http://library.paulsmiths.edu/catalog

Scriblio

Homepage

http://about.scriblio.net/

Demo site

http://library.plymouth.edu/

SOPAC2

Homepage

http://www.blyberg.net/2008/08/16/sopac-20-what-to-expect/

Demo site

http://www.darienlibrary.org/

VuFind

Homepage

http://vufind.org/

Demo site

http://vufind.org/demo/

On the Horizon…

BiblioCommons

Homepage

http://bibliocommons.com/

Demo site

http://www.opl.on.ca/

Extensible Catalog (XC)

Homepage

http://extensiblecatalog.info

Presentation Mechanics

[Updated 20080329T1925 : Added links.]

[Updated 20080424T1151 : Updated link to the NISO page for the event. Thanks Jodi!]

[Update 20080911T1143 : Added SOPAC2 and Bibliocommons (thanks Josh!) plus XC as well as a link to the screencast/audio mashup of the session.]

[Updated 20090526T1603 : Added link to Oakville Public Library as an example of Bibliocommons. Thanks, Chris!]

The text was modified to update a link from dltj.org/article/web-opac-schemes/ to http:///dltj.org/article/web-opac-schemes/ on December 30th, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/next-generation-library-catalogs.html to http://www.alatechsource.org/ltr/next-generation-library-catalogs on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to https://publications.techsource.ala.org/bookstore/displayItem.pl?itemID=2604 on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://ukty-mt.iii.com/iii/encore/app on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html to http://web.archive.org/web/20080328163000/http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://blacklight.betech.virginia.edu/ to http://www.lib.virginia.edu/digital/resndev/blacklight.html on January 28th, 2011.

NISO is conducting a workshop later this month called Next Generation Discovery: New Tools, Aging Standards. The workshop is described this way: “Discovering scholarly information and data is essential for research and use of the content that the information community is producing and making available. The development of knowledge bases, web systems, repositories, and other sources for this information brings the need for effective discovery — search-driven discovery and network (or browse) driven discovery — tools to the forefront. With new tools and systems emerging, however, are standards keeping pace with the next generation of tools? What’s coming up and where might standards fit to assist in this arena? The forum will include both a look at the current state of discovery tools and at new visions of what these tools might look like in the next several years.”

I am privileged to be on the agenda for a session on the second day called “Discovery Tools and the OPAC.” A foundational element of the talk is an earlier DLTJ post that categorized ways OPACs can be enhanced. The full abstract is:

The workshop starts with a keynote by Richard Ackerman plus presentations by Eric Schnell and Dave Munger, and Dinah Sanders from Innovative Interfaces. Early-bird registration for the workshop ends a week from today.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/discovery08/ to http://www.niso.org/news/events/2008/discovery08/ on January 19th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/discovery08/agenda.html to http://www.niso.org/news/events/2008/discovery08/agenda/ on January 19th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://brewing.iii.com/2008/03/05/taking-my-show-and-crutches-on-the-road/ on January 20th, 2011.

Schemes to add functionality to the web OPAC fall into four categories: web OPAC enhancements, web OPAC wrappers, web OPAC replacements, and integrated library system replacements. I’m outlining these four techniques in a report I’m editing for an OhioLINK strategic task force and a bit of a reality check on this categorization is desired, so if I’m missing anything big (conceptually or announcements of projects/products that fall into these categories), please let me know in the comments. Generally speaking, this list is ordered by cost/complexity to implement — from lowest to highest — as well as the ability to offer the described enhanced services from least likely to most likely.

Web OPAC enhancements are functions that are added to the existing web OPAC system. This most often entails additional product purchases from the automation vendor, such as the optional enhancements in WebPAC Pro for Millennium OPACs or content solutions in SirsiDynix. Enhancement can also be added through creative use of an existing web OPAC’s template functions, such as the method by which LibraryThing for Libraries can be added to OPAC displays.

Web OPAC wrappers use the existing web OPAC provided by the integrated library system as a source of information, but hide that information behind a completely new interface. The intervening system get that information from the integrated library system through a variety of mechanism. In some cases, it may be possible to use established protocols (such as Z39.50) or programming interfaces (such as an XML content server). In cases where such functionality is not available from the underlying integrated library system, a “screen-scraping HTML” technique may be required. ¹

One example of such a wrapper is the work at Ann Arbor Public Library on SOPAC. Short for “Social OPAC,” SOPAC is “a set of social networking tools integrated into the AADL catalog [that] gives users the ability to rate, review, comment-on, and tag items.”² It uses an open source content management system called Drupal as a structure through which the added functionality is provided. For example, when a user seeks the bibliographic information page for a catalog record, that request is made from the user’s browser to the Drupal software. The Drupal software in turn makes a request to the integrated library system for the bibliographic information it holds. The response from the ILS is parsed by the Drupal software for key information such as title, author, subjects, holdings, etc. This information is mixed with information stored in the Drupal database (ratings, tags, reviews, cover images, etc.) and a new web page is created and returned to the user’s browser.

Another example of a web OPAC wrapper is Scriblio (formerly called WPopac). Using the underlying framework of WordPress, Scriblio offers faceted browsing, tagging, and syndication feeds for the underlying Millennium WebOPAC. Scriblio is a project of Plymouth State University, supported in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Both SOPAC and Scriblio are available under open source licenses.

Web OPAC replacements are new systems that completely replace the existing web OPAC. Unlike wrappers (which get their bibliographic data in real-time from the underlying web OPAC), these replacements operate on sets of records that are extracted from the ILS or come from another source. (In some cases, these replacements still rely on the underlying web OPAC as a source of item status information such as checked out status and due date.) The first notable OPAC replacement was at North Carolina State University when its library installed and configured the Endeca software to provide a faceted browse to the library catalog. By itself, an Endeca OPAC display does not enable tagging, annotation, or user aggregation services such as recommendation engines.  Other similar web OPAC replacements are Encore from Innovative Interfaces³, Primo from Ex Libris and Aquabrowser from Medialab Solutions. Miami University’s experiments with the open source Apache SOLR and the exported records from their Millennium system also fall into this category. Worldcat Local is also a form of web OPAC replacement noting that the source of bibliographic records is the OCLC Worldcat database rather than the local ILS.

ILS replacements offer the biggest opportunity for enhanced user services, particularly by adopting one of the open source solutions now available. At this time, neither of the open source solutions (Evergreen and Koha) offers more than faceted search and browsing. Unlike the commercial systems, however, the source code of the system can be modified to add these functions, and the modifications shared with other users of the same system.

[Update 20071015T1624 : Corrections made -- and the text improved! -- based on Betsy Graham's comment. Thanks, Betsy!]

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.iii.com/mill/webopac.shtml to http://web.archive.org/web/20071015145500/http://iii.com/mill/webopac.shtml on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html to http://web.archive.org/web/20080328163000/http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.sirsidynix.com/Solutions/Products/portalsearch.php#content to http://web.archive.org/web/20071109170053/http://www.sirsidynix.com/Solutions/Products/portalsearch.php#content on January 28th, 2011.

Footnotes

1. Such a technique gets the information from the ILS using the existing web OPAC. Such schemes are generally fragile because changes to the underlying web OPAC can have detrimental affects on the content scraping process.
2. Blyberg, J. (2007). AADL.org Goes Social. blyberg.net. Retrieved October 12, 2007, from http://www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social/
3. As Betsy Graham, Vice President of Product Management at Innovative Interfaces, notes in the comments, the Encore will perform real-time queries to a Millennium ILS for bibliographic data, and in such cases the data extract is not needed.

Rob Casson of Miami University announced this weekend the beta availability of their video catalog. In a subsequent posting, Rob describes the user interface elements. Rob and the crew at Miami are seeking feedback on the interface, so if you have some be sure to offer it to them.

A couple of notes on the mechanisms Rob is using. Apache Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library (also an Apache project). You can think of Lucene as the raw indexing and search engine with Solr layered on top to provide a non-Java interface to a rich feature set. What Miami has done is extract all of the bibliographic and related item records out of their Innovative Interface system, written programs to transform that data into XML, indexed it with Solr/Lucene and created a search interface.

Now what makes this really interesting is how much useful information is in the MARC record that doesn’t currently find its way into the WebPAC interface. For instance, this snapshot shows the facets where the MARC record has fielded data that can be turned into browsable lists:

Example from Miami University’s video catalog showing the available fielded data.

The corresponding WebPAC pre-search limits (for keyword searching) only includes a subset of languages, media formats, locations and does not include topic, genre, LC/SuDoc classes, and coverage date. In other words, there is a whole lot of information in the MARC record that isn’t being exposed in the normal WebPAC interface. Since Miami is in full control over the data in the Solr-based index, though, they are free to include as much or as little in the end-user interface.

Combined with faceted browsing, this makes for a very simple and quick interface to narrow down a large set of records. At the time of writing this entry, Miami’s video library consisted of 10,538 records. In three clicks, one can narrow that down to the 12 French-language comedy films in DVD format:

Example from Miami University’s video catalog facets after browsing for French-language Comedies on DVD.

From this screen, to see what is available in all media formats one need just click the red ‘X’ to the right of “DVD”. Also note the “RSS Feed” symbol on the right side of this interface snapshot. The results of any search/browse are immediately available as an RSS feed — a very convenient way to receive notifications of new titles that match this search!

Congratulations, Rob and everyone else at Miami that brought this interface into existence. It is a nice model and something we all can learn from through your experiences. Please keep us updated as the project continues.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://foam.lib.muohio.edu/blog/?p=13 on February 11th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://foam.lib.muohio.edu/blog/?p=14 on February 11th, 2011.

This post is the second in a series about the application of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) system design pattern to library services. The first post in this series focused on defining “Service Oriented Architecture” using the analogy of a transportation network. This post goes into some detail about what makes a “service” in this architecture and offers an example using a hypothetical use case: a union library catalog (Open WorldCat) making a statement about the availability of a book.

Why are we even looking at SOA?

SOA is a means of organizing solutions that promotes reuse, growth and interoperability. It is not itself a solution to domain problems but rather an organizing and delivery paradigm that enables one to get more value from use both of capabilities which are locally “owned” and those under the control of others. It also enables one to express solutions in a way that makes it easier to modify or evolve the identified solution or to try alternate solutions. ¹

The first sentence is a statement that reflects SOA position as the latest step on an evolutionary path from monolithic to modular computing. In the really old days of electronic computing, every sequence of processing instructions was defined from scratch — you programmed the computer to do everything. Very quickly one realized that the programming code being written contained a lot of redundancy, so “code libraries” were formed that held all of the repeated instructions; no longer did everyone have to write and debug their own code routines to get the current date or write out a character…you used the supplied code libraries.

Gradually, as systems became more and more complex, the computing profession came up with more code libraries and developed higher levels of abstraction to deal with the complexity. “Objects” as programming entities were introduced in the 1960s via Simula 67, a programming language designed for making simulations, and Smalltalk, a programming language developed at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, introduced the term Object-oriented Programming (OOP) to represent the pervasive use of objects and messages as the basis for computation. OOP became the dominant programming methodology during the mid-1980s largely due to the influence of C++, an extension of the C programming language, but for the most part the applications developed using the OOP methodology remained as applications running on a solitary computer system. ²

OOP and SOA are similar in that each seeks to encapsulate activities to an abstract level at which point the abstractions can be reused as building blocks to larger applications. Where they differ, as explained by the OASIS Reference Model for Service-Oriented Architecture ³, is at the level of abstraction: in the OOP paradigm the focus is on packaging data and operations whereas in the SOA paradigm the focus is on “the task or business function &mdash getting something done.” Or, if you will, providing a service.

Definition of “Service”

In the SOA sense of the word, a service is a set of capabilities offered by a service provider through a service definition that makes the capabilities discoverable by a service consumer. The implementation of the service is “opaque” to the consumer, and the invocation of a service itself may seek out the SOA-defined capabilities of another service provider. The real-world consequences of a service invocation can be: 1) information transferred from a provider to a consumer (e.g. “read”); 2) a change in the state of information at the provider (e.g. “write”); or 3) a combination of both.

The amount of information received and/or changed per service invocation can be rather small, and the transaction itself can be rather light-weight. For instance, in an ACM QUEUE interview Werner Vogels, Amazon’s Chief Technical Officer says that when “you hit the Amazon.com gateway page, the application calls more than 100 services to collect data and construct the page for you.” ⁴ If it took seconds rather than miliseconds to respond to a SOA query, Amazon’s architecture would clearly be unsustainable.

Back up to the quotation near the top of this post, the second sentence ends by speaking of “capabilities which are locally ‘owned’ and those under the control of others.” SOA, by defining this abstract notion of service and focusing on the semantics surrounding a service, promotes the exchange of services across organizational boundaries. This is the subject of the following hypothetical use case.

Hypothetical Use Case: Reflection of Local Library Holdings in Open WorldCat

You are all ready to proceed with this plan, ⁵ but there is one sticking point: your local public catalog displays the status of the item (“available”, “checked out”, “lost”, etc.). And WorldCat, although it contains the combined holdings of thousands of libraries, it doesn’t know whether any particular item is available or not — the only thing stored in the WorldCat database is whether an item is owned, not whether it is checked out. The status of the item is only known to the local catalog system.

Enter a Service Oriented Architecture. The local catalog system makes known a service whereby an service consumer can ask for the status of an item. What is returned by the service provider can be as simple as a string of text that is a spelled-out version of the item status or it can be as complex as an XML schema with attributes for “checked out” or “lost” and parsable date fields and so forth. Remember, though — these SOA exchanges need to be processed quickly. As WorldCat is generating the screen of the search results for the user, it calls back to the library catalog system to find the status of the item and then displays it for the user. The result might be something like this:

Okay, but is That What the User Really Wanted?

Available Online

If we see in the description of the item that it is on the web somewhere. In this case, the word “Online” can link right to the item.

Available Onsite; Delivered in 1-2 days

This item is physically held in the library and the inventory control aspect of the library system says that it is available. So the choices to the user are “onsite”, which could link to a page that describes which library holds the item and the approximate location of the item within the library, or “delivered in 1-2 days” for a user service that will pull an item from the shelves and deliver it to an office or home.

Delivery on or about…

This item is checked out. A hold has been placed on it, and when the item is returned (hopefully no later than the original due date) it will be turned around to the next user.

Delivered in 3-4 weeks

This item was declared lost, so the 3-4 week delivery statement represents the estimated time to get the item from another library through interlibrary loan. Ultimately, does the user really care if the item was declared lost? Probably not — they just want to get to the item!

Layers of Services

Delivered in 2-3 days

The item was not available at the local site (so we don’t see an “on-site” link) but it is available from an OhioLINK member institution. The average turn-around time for an OhioLINK physical delivery request is about 2 to 3 days. But again, the user doesn’t care at this point where the item is coming from — their local library or one somewhere across the state; the only thing the user likely cares about is how long it would take to get the item if he or she asked for it to be delivered to their home or office.

But What of the “Integrated Library System”?

The text was modified to update a link from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming&oldid=76627897#History to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming?oldid=76627897#History on January 13th, 2011.

Footnotes

1. OASIS Reference Model for Service-Oriented Architecture, Committee Specification 1, dated 2 Aug 2006, lines 175-179. The document was retrieved from http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/19679/soa-rm-cs.pdf on 18-Sep-2006.
2. Summarized version of “Object-oriented programming.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 19 Sep 2006, 18:27 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 19 Sep 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming&oldid=76627897#History.
3. OASIS Reference Model for Service-Oriented Architecture, Committee Specification 1, dated 2 Aug 2006, lines 243-259.
4. “A Conversation with Werner Vogels.” ACM Queue. 4(4): May 2006. 19-Sep-2006 http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=388
5. For the record, please note the word “hypothetical” sprinkled liberally throughout this example. WorldCat cannot now do the things that are described in this post, the screenshots are unauthorized adaptations of WorldCat web pages, and, to the best of my knowledge, OCLC is not planning on doing anything like what is described here. Although it would be really neat if they could do it….
6. yeah, yeah — I can almost hear the sharp-witted speculations about our dinner-time conversations from those outside the library community.

When it comes to seeking a full-text copy of that known-item citation, are our users asking “what have you done for me lately?” OpenURL has taken us pretty far when one starts in an online environment — a link that sends the citation elements to our favorite link resolver — but it only works when the user starts online with an OpenURL-enabled database. (We also need to set aside for the moment the need for some sort of OpenURL base resolver URL discovery tool — how does an arbitrary service know which OpenURL base resolver I want to use!) What if a user has a citation on a printed paper or from some other non-online form? Could we make their lives easier, too? Here is one way. (Thanks go out to Celeste Feather and Thomas Dowling for helping me think through the possibilities and issues.)

Some sites have addressed this issue with a static HTML form that prompts for the citation information (for example, this sample from Ex Libris’ SFX demo server). That is so Web-1.0, though — you have to fill out the entire form before you get any response back from the server on the availability (or non-availability) of the article you are trying to find. What if we could meet the user where they are with an interactive dialog that would quickly connect the user with the article?

One of the underlying assumptions is that users are still going to the OPAC to do a known-item search by journal title to see if the journal is held by the library in some form. The scheme that follows, though, would work just as well in A-Z journal lists and other places where the ISSN of the desired journal is known. The process starts when the user clicks on a link encoded with the ISSN from the bibliographic record pointing into our new OpenURL link resolver. The link resolver returns to the browser a page that lists articles from the given ISSN in reverse chronological order. (The theory here is, of course, to give the user some results, even though they are not likely what the user wants!)

The page also has an HTML form with fields for citation elements. As the user keys information into the form fields, AJAX calls update the results area of the web page with relevant hits. For instance, if a user types the first few letters of the author’s last name, the results area of the web page shows articles by that author in the journal. (We could also help the user with form-field completion based on name authority records and other author tables so that even as the user types the first few letters of the last name he or she could then pick the full name out of a list.) With luck, the user might find the desired article without any additional data entry!

Another path into the citation results via the link resolver: if a user types the volume into the form field, the AJAX calls cause links to appear to issues of that volume in addition to updating the results to a reverse chronological listing of articles. If a user then types the issue into the HTML form field or clicks the issue link, the results area displays articles from that issue in page number order. Selecting the link of an article would show the list of sources where the article can be found (as our OpenURL resolvers do now), and off the user goes.

Ideally, all of the form elements would be AJAX’d, so if a user types an author’s last name and a year, the appropriate citation(s) would show up. One might even be able to insert this activity in an IFRAME right on the bibliographic record display (if one have that much control over HTML layouts of various systems).

So what is to prevent us from reaching this citation discovery nirvana now? Well, a couple of things:

1. Our link resolvers don’t know anything about the actual citations of items in journals — they just know how to take the citation elements and construct a URL that points into some other system. In order to make this work, our link resolver would need to be paired with a metasearch engine or a comprehensive index of article citations (or both).
2. It would be helpful if there was an ISSN disambiguator to find alternate ISSNs (print vs. electronic, etc.) in order to cast a wide net for possible results. (In other words, a counterpart to OCLC’s xISBN resolver service.)

Two pretty high hurdles. Still, it would be really useful if we could pull it off, wouldn’t it?

The text was modified to remove a link to http://demo.exlibrisgroup.com:9003/demo/cgi/core/citation-linker.cgi on January 28th, 2011.

What of a service existed where the patrons selected an item they needed out of our library catalog and that item was delivered to the patron even when the library did not yet own the item? Would that be useful? With the growth of online bookstores, our users do have the expectation of finding something they need on the web, clicking a few buttons and having it delivered. When such expectations of what is possible exist, where is the first place a patron would go to find recently published items — the online bookstore or their local library catalog? Does your gut tell you it is the online bookstore? Would it be desirable if the patron’s instinct were to be the local library catalog?

A savvy patron looking for a recently published item will likely try the local library catalog to see if the item has been selected, purchased, received, cataloged, processed, and shelved (hereafter “SPRCPS”) by the staff — in other words, gone through the traditional process libraries use for acquiring items. If not, the patron has one of three choices (that I can think of):

1. make a request for the item to be SPRCPS’d with a hold placed on the item so that the patron is notified when it is ready;
2. start an Interlibrary Loan process to try to get the item from another site that has SPRCPS’d the item faster than your library; or
3. pay a cost premium — buy the book themselves and have it delivered.

Looking at this from the perspective of elapsed time, #1 is likely many weeks, #2 is likely a few weeks, and #3 is likely a few days. Looking at this from the perspective of direct cost to the patron, #1 is the cheapest, #2 may be free or some nominal ILL transaction cost (depending on local policy), and #3 is the most expensive. All-in-all, reasonable tradeoffs.

But what if our libraries offered a service that had the speed of #3 and the cost of #1? Do you think that would be an appropriate service to our users?

Local Catalog Display

In terms of the mechanics of getting these records into our systems, it seems that we need a new form of MARC record loads into our systems. The most likely source? How about what booksellers use now — the ONIX format “that publishers can use to distribute electronic information about their books to wholesale, e-tail and retail booksellers, other publishers, and anyone else involved in the sale of books.” A feed of ONIX records from publishers, filtered through a selection criteria, converted into MARC21, and loaded into our local catalogs would do the trick.

Automated “Request This Item” Function

Speedy Copy Cataloging and Shelf Prep

• Use “on the fly” circulation procedures to lend the book out immediately. When it is returned route the item through technical services for formal copy cataloging (or decide that the Onyx data is acceptable as is for the copy cataloging).
• Use a distributor that will delivery the item shelf-ready. Just yesterday, through an LISnews posting, I learned that Amazon is now one such distributor:
  

  Amazon offers a wide array of library processing options. In addition to mylar jackets on hard-cover books, Amazon also offers MARC records, spine labels, and barcodes. By partnering with leading cataloging companies and organizations, Amazon is also able to offer you highly customized MARC records, spine labels, and barcodes that meet your specific needs.

New Roles for Staff

• Selectors/bibliographers still have front-end work to do. They are the ones to tune the profile of “items that could be purchased” records (informed by the requesting patterns from users) that are loaded into the system and to buy items not yet requested that round out a collection. This is modestly akin to the approval plan systems we use now.
• Copy cataloging staff may have a reduced workload for items that come in through the RTIB process — particularly if the distributor selected does much of the shelf prep and copy cataloging work already. This, too, is nothing new: we have been outsourcing more of our technical services work and assigning the copy cataloging and shelf prep staff to work on other areas of the collection.

Summary

Selected

An initial round of selection is done by the bibliographers and collection managers. They decide which broad categories of ONIX records from publishers/distributors will be represented as “items-to-be-acquired” in the local catalog. Patrons, then vote with their fingers and mice clicks as to which items meet their needs.

Purchased

An entirely automated business-to-business transaction. Once the user decides the item is what they need, our library computer talks directly to the publisher/distributor computer and buys the item.

Received

The publisher/distributor doesn’t dally — they ship the item to us for next-day or second day delivery. When it arrives in our mail room, we need to act fast.

Cataloged

Copy cataloging could be done by us, we could receive copy catalog records from the publisher/distributor, or we could decide that — at least for now — that the ONIX data is good enough and that like an “on-the-fly” transaction the formal copy cataloging will happen after the item is returned.

Processed

Choices here, too. Will our staff do the shelf-prep work or is that something we contract with the publisher/distributor? In any case quick processing here, too because…

Shelved

…we want to get the item in the hands of the user who requested it. “Shelved” in this case could be the hold-pickup shelf, or it could be a local physical delivery service that sends the item to the patron.

Can we do this as fast as it would take the patron to get the item directly from the online bookseller? Maybe not — we do have some necessary processing steps that a direct patron purchase process does not have. Can we make that delay short enough so that the patron considers it acceptable as compared to the direct price premium of ordering it themselves?

Do we want to?

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.bisg.org/onix/index.html to http://www.bisg.org/activities-programs/activity.php?n=d&id=15&cid=2.

The text was modified to update a link from http://lisnews.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/01/023238 to http://lisnews.org/node/19233 on January 13th, 2011.