Crowdsourcing the Maintenance of E-Resource Metadata: How WorldCat Knowledge Base’s Cooperative...
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Crowdsourcing the Maintenance of E-Resource Metadata How WorldCat knowledge base’s Cooperative Management Initiative Can Improve Data Quality Charlie Remy Assistant Professor Electronic Resources and Serials Librarian University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Paul Moss Product Manager WorldCat knowledge base OCLC
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Transcript of Crowdsourcing the Maintenance of E-Resource Metadata: How WorldCat Knowledge Base’s Cooperative...
Crowdsourcing the Maintenance
of E-Resource Metadata
How WorldCat knowledge base’s Cooperative
Management Initiative Can Improve Data Quality
Charlie RemyAssistant Professor
Electronic Resources and Serials Librarian
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Paul MossProduct Manager
WorldCat knowledge base
OCLC
A little about UTC
Background:
• Public university
• 11,000 students
• $1.4M library materials budget
• WorldShare Management
Services (WMS) user since 2012
• WorldCat Local for discovery
A quick show of hands…
Who currently uses the
WorldCat knowledge base?
The WorldCat knowledge base
A database containing:
• Metadata about electronic resources
– All available collections
– Library specific holdings
– How to access each resource
• Content includes:
– Databases, collections or individual titles
– Owned or licensed or open access
– Journals, eBooks, videos, audio & images
Why register collections in the
WorldCat knowledge base? FindEasy access to e-resources in search
results, Open URL link resolution, and
A-Z journal list
ManageManage budgeting, ordering and
acquisition of electronic resources
UseRights management, usage
statistics and link resolution of
electronic materials
ShareQuick and easy sharing of your
electronic content
Candid Insights: The Pros
• No MARC records needed for e-resources
• Cooperative management
• Faster data updates
• Customized holdings feeds from some providers
• Automatic holdings sync with discovery platform
• Additional OCLC staff
• KB-L listserv
Candid Insights: The Cons
• Some data is slow to be ingested
• Slow to update some collections upon request
• Not prodding providers enough for updated metadata
• Lack of reporting
• Quality control – missing obvious data problems
• System capacity limitations
• Poor provider data quality
Why Cooperative Management?
• The WorldCat knowledge base– 5,827 providers / vendors
– 12,033 collections
– 18+ million records
– 1,500 libraries with holdings in the system
– 537,654,462 holdings from all libraries
– 12 OCLC staff (data & support), 4 OCLC staff (KB infrastructure)
• Massive amounts of data
• OCLC has efficiencies of scale, but a small staff
• Builds on cooperative tradition of WorldCat
knowledgebase
5,900 + providers
Member libraries approve/deny changes before they are made
Approvals/Rejections
Cooperative Management
Thoughts on Approval/Rejection
• Transparent updates
• Prevent bad data from being added
• Inconsistent attention to detail by participants
• Lack of specific approval/rejection criteria
• Too many records (participants can only spot check)
• Lack of notification feature
• 255 character limit for comments is too small
• Reject vote comments are shared with providers
• Some comments may be missed
5,900 + providers
knowledgebase
User Contributions
Cooperative Management
Members can add/update/delete records and add new collections
Thoughts on User Contributions
• Less redundant work
• Participants are fixing small, but important problems
• Data team follow-up to make URL changes global
• Global vs. local metadata confusion
• Changes may be overwritten by future provider updates
• Limited contribution of global collections
Lessons Learned So Far
• 10% of libraries using cooperative approvals
• 3% of libraries contributing changes
• Barely any misuse or abuse of the cooperative features
• Adding a KB-L listserv drastically increased library
participation/communication
• Gaps in how we support a community including standard
guidelines/rules/expectations
• Need to encourage more participation
• Future plans:
– Increased transparency
– Protection of changes (OCLC numbers, new records)
Areas for Improvement
• Balance provider updates with community changes
• Accept/reject community guidelines
• Regular kb user community meetings
• OCLC quality control – catch obvious problems sooner
• Notification feature
• Increased library participation
• Cooperative management for other kb’s?
