What difference a good tool? using Endeca for a faceted catalog Emily Lynema NCSU Libraries ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program November 3, 2006

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Agenda  The Context: Next Gen Search Tools vs. OPAC Problems  Local Implementation Why, What and How?  Assessment Usage Statistics Usability Testing  The Future It’s still just a local catalog!

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? The Context

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? A question  “How is the new generation of library catalog being developed?” informed and enhanced by search technologies developed outside of the library more than just “2.0” based on how our users know how to search, not on how we want them to search

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention?

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention?

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention?

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention?

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention?

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Existing OPACs are hard to use  Lots of topical searches and poor subject access keyword gives too many or too few results – leads to general distrust among users authority searching is under-utilized and misunderstood  Relevance = system sort order  Unforgiving on spelling errors, stemming  Response time doesn’t meet expectations of web-savvy users

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Valuable metadata is buried  Subject headings are not leveraged in keyword searching they should be browsed or linked from, not searched  Data from the item record is not leveraged should be able to easily filter based on user’s changing requirements using item type, location, circulation status, popularity

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? What’s the big picture?  Improve the quality of the library catalog user experience.  Exploit our existing metadata infrastructure (make MARC work harder).  Build a more flexible catalog tool that can be integrated with discovery tools of the future.

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? What is Endeca?  Software company based in Cambridge, MA  Search and information access technology provider for a number of major e- commerce websites  Developers of the Endeca Information Access Platform

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Why Endeca?  Customized relevance ranking of results  Better subject access by leveraging available metadata through facets  Improved response time  Enhanced natural language searching through spell correction, etc.  Browse

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Local Implementation

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Demo

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Relevance ranking Based on locally customizable algorithm: Most relevant: query as entered For multi-term searches: phrase match Field match  title match more relevant than notes match Other factors:  number of fields matched  static ordering (publication date, circulation stats)

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Faceted browse  Combine search and browse in single interface (Guided Navigation™)  Filter results across multiple facets  Remove facets in any order

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Facet refinements 1. Availability 2. LC Classification 3. Subject: Topic 4. Subject: Genre 5. Format 11. Browse tab: New 6. Library 7. Subject: Region 8. Subject: Era 9. Language 10. Author

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? True browse  Regain ability to browse catalog without entering any search terms

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Added search tools  Automatic spell correction  “Did you mean…” suggestions  Automatic stemming

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? The nitty gritty  Endeca co-exists with SirsiDynix Unicorn ILS and Web2 online catalog Endeca handles keyword search Web2 handles authority search and detail page display  Endeca indexes MARC records exported nightly from Unicorn  Endeca = discovery portion of the ILS

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Implementation team  Seven member team 5 IT/DLI staff, 1 cataloging librarian, 1 reference librarian As a team: functional requirements, metadata, interface issues (total of hours) Java-trained IT librarian (~40 hrs/wk for 14 weeks) IT project manager: (~10 hours/wk for 20 weeks)  Timeline Software acquisition: Summer 2005 Implementation: Aug 2005 to Jan 2006

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Assessment

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Usage statistics

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Usage statistics

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Usage statistics

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Usability testing  10 undergraduate students 5 with new Endeca-based interface 5 with old catalog interface Identical searching tasks  Data collected Task difficulty/failure Task duration

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Usability testing

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Usability testing

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Usability testing  For students, relevance ranking is key. July – Sep 2006: ~14% continued to page 2  Faceted navigation is intuitive, even for students who don’t use it.  Beware of library jargon “keyword anywhere”, “keyword in subject”  User behavior is influenced by previous experience.

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? The Future

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Future directions  Experiment with FRBR search/display through partnership with OCLC.  Integrate catalog w/other tools through web services: OpenSearch, RSS  Enrich catalog through external web services: book jackets, reviews, etc. – Amazon/OCLC  Build modular shopping cart functionality.  Use Endeca to index local collections.

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? So what? It’s still just a catalog 1.Dismantle the old 2.Rebuild / exchange individual parts 3.Rebuild into something new 4.Repeat as necessary

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? The next generation catalog  Lots of content probably of different types (ex: full text vs. MARC vs. XML) but not sure exactly what!  Both user and machine interface data linked into and from many external contexts  More powerful search tool must be effective to be used  Flexible enough to evolve

ACRL Delaware Valley Chapter Fall Program The Future of the Catalog: Deconstruction or Reinvention? Thanks  NCSU project site (including slides):  Emily Lynema Systems Librarian for Digital Projects