The Web and the OPAC - Creating (Library) Value in the Age of the

Amazoogles

National Autonomous University of Mexico 9 October 2006

Stuart L. WeibelSenior Research Scientist, OCLC Research

Visiting Scholar, University of Washington iSchool

OCLC Research

Research and standardization:• OCLC services• Membership• Library evangelism to

the Web community Metadata management Knowledge organization Content management Interoperability Users and systems

interactions ~30 employees

What do we mean by value?

The Library Business Model• Make information look free to end users• Aggregation of public resources for management,

organization, and curation of public content The SCOAP (of the) Mission

• Selection• Collection• Organization• Access• Preservation

Return on investment Return of Patrons

Value Domains

Societal• Long term, authoritative curation of the cultural,

technical, and scientific assets of a society• Different challenges in paper versus electronic

libraries• Information Neutrality• Public Trust

Technical• Systems for supporting SCOAP activities

• Bookshelves and furniture• Cataloging (and catalogs)• Electronic systems

Value Domains

Societal• Long term, authoritative curation of the cultural,

technical, and scientific assets of a society• Different challenges in paper versus electronic

libraries• Information Neutrality• Public Trust

Technical• Systems for supporting SCOAP activities

• Bookshelves and furniture• Cataloging (and catalogs)• Electronic systems

Value Domains (continued)

Social: So-called Library 2.0 approaches• Policies and services to promote community engagement• Recommender Services (reader advisories)

• Ala Nancy Pearl (a real librarian!)? • People who bought X, also bought Y (Amazon.com)• Book Reviews (again, Amazon.com)• LibraryThing.com

• Tagging – folksonomies: what value?• Public Bibliography

• What is more important for discovery? A book review or a MARC record?

• Linking structure among first class objects is a central feature of the Web

The Nancy Pearl Action Figure(complete with shushing action!)

Value Domains (continued)

Social: So-called Library 2.0 approaches• Policies and services to promote community engagement• Recommender Services (reader advisories)

• Ala Nancy Pearl (a real librarian!)? • People who bought X, also bought Y (Amazon.com)• Book Reviews (again, Amazon.com)• LibraryThing.com

• Tagging – folksonomies: what value?• Public Bibliography

• What is more important for discovery? A book review or a MARC record?

• Linking structure among first class objects is a central feature of the Web

Everything 2.0 (Web 2.0, Library 2.0….)

Bringing people back into the loop through the use of so-called Social Software:

Andrew McAfee’s SLATES pneumonic:• Search: Find what you need, enhanced by emergent

description (see tags, below)• Links: link relationships or link ranking algorithms• Authoring: Ease of content creation – spare me the

angle brackets, make it bone simple• Tags: What do my colleagues call this? I bet it works

better than what the IT department calls it• Extensions: If you thought X was [good | interesting |

important | useful], you might, by extension, find Y so• Signals: tell me something has changed

Extract (and exploit) value in structured data Holdings are key – who has the item? Links to catalogs and virtual reference services Enrich the data

• Amazon-like book reviews• Cover art & table of contents (full text?)

Controlled vocabularies (esp Medicine, law, sciences)

Folksonomies? Classification systems Authority control

Increase integration across boundaries

The OPAC is becoming irrelevant for end-users (but remains a local management tool

Solution of last resort for users• OPACs have less functionality than other

alternatives (Amazoogles) “Weave libraries into the Web”

• Drive our services into the open Web• Unplug & Play• Search engines• Social software systems

WorldCat in the Open Web

WorldCat subsets determined by the search engine (not the complete database)

On these sites: Include either of the following with your search terms:

Google "find in a library" (include phrasing quote marks) Yahoo! site:worldcatlibraries.org (no space after colon)

English speakers won’t do this… can you imagine speakers of other languages???

Other WorldCat Partner Sites:

Abebooks (abebooks.com) Alibris (alibris.com) Amazon.com (amazon.com) Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (abaa.com) Biblio (biblio.com) BookPage (bookpage.com) DirectTextbook (directtextbook.com) Google Scholar and Google Books (scholar.google.com,

books.google.com) Greenwood Publishing Group (greenwood.com) HCI Bibliography (hcibib.org) Windows Live Academic (academic.live.com)

Some general principles for technical value creation in a network environment

Reduce impediments to search Increase integration across boundaries Build Network Effect value Extract (and exploit) value in structured data Increase the efficiency of metadata creation Promote participation

• Book reviews• Linking• Recommender systems

Public Bibliography:

Metadata is expensive Cataloging data is important, costly, and ill-suited to public

use (at least for some aspects of public use) Mobilizing users to be participants in the creation of

metadata (in the form of book reviews, recommender services, and linking, either explicit or inferred) is a potentially rich source of metadata and linking currency

Amazon is effective at this LibraryThing has a strong and growing approach Libraries and large cooperative cataloging agencies are

thus far not doing so well.

Book Reviews:Desirable Characteristics of First Class Objects Book Reviews are (should be) stand-alone First Class

Objects:• Harvestable – findable by search engines on the Web• Attributable – I want credit… • Linked appropriately to a persistent catalog such as

World or a national catalog• Persistently identified (the identifier is stable over time)• Curated (the content is stable over time)

Link Currency

Linkages are an important currency on the Web:• Who links to you• Who do you link to

To rise in relevance rankings, library-managed links should be persistent and of one form:

• http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26160663&referer=brief_results• http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=083890596X&qt=owc_search• http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=083890596X

• http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26160663

Multiple identifiers are confusing and dilute link currency.

Libraries must compare favorably with related information 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 experience

• 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

Stuart L. Weibel

Visit me at: http://weibel-lines.typepad.com

Contact me at: Stuart.Weibel@gmail.com

Thank you for your attention