Information Trends in Libraries Get More Value from Data Give More Value to Users Get Users involved July 9, 2007 Stuart Weibel Senior Research Scientist OCLC Programs and Research

What do we mean by value?  The Library Business Model Make information look free to end users  The SCOAP (of the Mission) Selection Collection Organization Access Preservation  Return on (society’s) investment  Return of Patrons

Value Domains  Societal Authoritative curation of the cultural, technical, and scientific assets of a society Information Neutrality Public Trust  Technical Systems for supporting SCOAP activities Bookshelves Cataloging (and catalogs) Electronic systems

Value Domains (continued)  Social: So-called Library 2.0 approaches Promote community engagement Recommender Services (reader advisories) People who bought X, also bought Y LibraryThing.com does this well Tagging – folksonomies: what value? Public Bibliography What is more important for discovery and use: a book review or a MARC record? Linking structure among first class objects is a central feature of the Web

What is a First Class Object?  An information entity that has: Identity on the Web A persistent identifier Accessible by anyone or any application Stands alone Attribution (authorship) Intellectual property Rights are clear Curated (don’t leave lying around)

FRBR entities should all be First Class Objects  All FRBR entities should be addressable on the Web Group One Works, expressions, manifestations, and items Group Two Named entities – people, organizations Group three Subjects, concepts, terms, places…  Allow the user to enter and traverse the catalog from any of these entry points

Book Reviews: Again, First Class Objects  Persistently identified – with a single naming strategy  Accessible on their own  Attributable – give me credit  Linked appropriately – to WorldCat Records  Curated – don’t leave them lying around in blogs

Delivering Value from Data to the User WorldCat Identities a case study

WorldCat Identities (beta) Thom Hickey & Ralph LeVan, OCLC Programs and Research  20,000,000 names of people (real and fictional), organizations, and a smattering of animals (real and fictional)  Mined from OCLC records (100,000,000 records representing a billion plus of the common library holdings of OCLC’s global membership 

WorldCat Identities: Summary  Mine the data, extract value  Summarize the larger context  Link to all things useful Content (or its surrogates) Related authors Reviews Authority Data  Consumer environment that is attractive, useful, shareable, and richly linked

Library Branding, Social Networking, and Web 2.0 Giving value to users where and how they want it

Where is the Library as a Brand?  Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources A Report to the OCLC Membership  3300 Respondents to questions on: Library use Awareness and use of library electronic resources The Internet search engine, the library and the librarian Free vs. for-fee information The "Library" brand

The over-all picture:  Libraries are trusted sources of information  Search engines are trusted about the same  People care about the quantity and quality of information they find… speed is less important  They do not view paid information as more accurate than free information  The overwhelming branding image of libraries is… BOOKS Patrons do not think of the library as an important source of electronic information !

Building out the library brand  Build on the trust of our patrons  Build on our business model: Making information look free to end-users  Build on the scale that libraries represent Presence in every community Global scope and reach  Greater awareness of library resources  Make libraries a part of the new electronic environments that dominate social, educational, and work environments

Social Networking Software  Deliver library services into the emerging social networks  Motivate people to participate Tagging Book Reviews Emergent relationships that are evident from data about what people have and like

Social Consumer environments  Social Networking is not just for games Facebook Myspace Second Life Orkut  All are flawed as service delivery models Business models are closed Features are rudimentary  But… they foretell our digital future

Libraries must compare favorably with experiences that our patrons expect:  Discovery and recommender services  Web 2.0 social network capabilities  Experiences of comparable commercial service providers  Last-mile delivery capability  Bookstore social experiences Coffee-shop salons People to help us navigate the intricacies of a complicated knowledge space  We are offering an experience as well as a service

The future of Library catalogs?  Evolving towards the network level  Collections linked to people, organizations, global locations, concepts, context, metadata, and social networking benefits  Fit into the flow of the work and social lives of patrons  Help create a scaffolding for past knowledge and future productivity  Connect the User to the Library

Web or Scaffolding?

Web is a wonderful metaphor, but perhaps something a bit more durable?  We want more Coherence and context Mature, durable environments that will help us preserve our work and fix it in the context of our culture Honor the long-term mission of librarianship by embedding it in the emerging technologies of a social Web

Obrigado! Find me on the Web at…   