A Future for the Library Catalogue

T. Hickey

ACRL/DVCBryn Mawr3 November 2006

OCLC Research

Research for both• OCLC services• Membership

Metadata management Knowledge organization Content management Interoperability Systems & interaction design ~30 employees

Reports

Melvyl Recommender Project (CDL)• http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/melvyl_recommende

r/report_docs/Mellon_final.pdf

Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration…• http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf

Future of Cataloging at Indiana University• http://www.iub.edu/~libtserv/pub/Future_of_Cataloging_

White_Paper.pdf

Martha Yee: Beyond the OPAC: future directions for web-based catalogues• http://www.nla.gov.au/lis/stndrds/grps/acoc/papers2006.

html

Influences

FRBR Faceting Google, Yahoo, etc. Digital content Ranking Consortia Connectivity Remote users

Basic Approach

Go to the users• Bring data to the user• Make it as inviting as possible• Invite their participation

Use the data we have• Classification• Controlled vocabularies• Controlled names• FRBR• Usage data

OCLC’s Role

Largest consortia, largest catalog• 72 million records, growing at 12 million/year• 1.1 billion holdings• http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/grow.htm

Open WorldCat Relationships with Web indexers Authority control Data mining

General Observations

Grouping and ranking are critical Simpler is better Faster is better Faceting needs to be visible Authority control is important Local is not as important as it was

OCLC Research

Data mining• WorldCat Identities• Audience level

Authority control• VIAF• Heading control

FRBR• Algorithm• xISBN

Live search FictionFinder

WorldCat Identities

Create a page for each person in WorldCat• Name(s)• Works by and about• Subjects• Dates• Fiction/non-fiction• Roles• Co-authors

Add links• Wikipedia• Authority files

Approach

Borrow from• FictionFinder• RedLightGreen• FRBR• VIAF• PeopleAustralia• Wikipedia

Pages are ‘static’• Easier to do complicated analysis• Some parts may be editable• Use cover art in lieu of photos

Statistics

80 million (nominally) controlled headings 18 million different identities in WorldCat 2 million with at least five citations 12 million with only one citation 400,000 identities with non-Latin script forms

Plans, etc.

Make WorldCat Identities public this year Revised version of FictionFinder soon Improve authority control Extend authority control Improve FRBR matching

Do We Need It?

Just have Google harvest everything• Our experience with Google• Fielded searching• Reliable searching

Possibility of user-supplied metadata Cost of good metadata Cost of non-existent metadata

Conclusions

Shift to remote users forces new approaches Online availability – trend towards centralization More flexibility in implementations

Patrons are better served Less emphasis on physical collections

Thom Hickey hickey@oclc.org