Talis Insight 2007

OPAC 2.0: Teaching
the Pig to Sing
lipstick, cowbells and serendipity
Dave Pattern, Library Systems Manager
University of Huddersfield
d.c.pattern@hud.ac.uk
http://slideshare.net/daveyp

06/Nov/2007 Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change #1

Contents
• does your OPAC suck?
• OPAC survey findings
• experiences at Huddersfield
• other libraries
• OPAC 2.0
• further OPAC survey findings

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/


Does Your OPAC “Suck”?


“More Cowbell” …huh?

“Used to express that something is deeply
lacking oomph... to express that something
is far from perfect, needs repair, fixing,
rectifying.” (everything2.com)


The OPAC as a Pig
• “After all, you can put lipstick on a pig, but
it's still very much a pig.”
(Roy Tennant discussing the OPAC,
Library Journal, 2005)

• “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes
your time and it annoys the pig.”
(attrib. Robert Heinlein, author)


Pig Ugly?


“Kissy, Kissy?”


OPAC Survey (2007)
• On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is
extremely unhappy and 10 is extremely
happy), how happy are you with your
OPAC?

5.1



OPAC Survey (2007)
• One criticism of OPACs is that they rarely
have cutting edge features that our users
expect from a modern web site.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you
think your OPAC meets the needs and
expectations of your users?

4.5

OPAC Survey (2007)
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easy do you think
one of your average users finds your OPAC is to
use?

4.6
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how important do you
think it is that an OPAC is easy & intuitive to
use?

9.2

Experiences at Huddersfield
• definitely not OPAC 2.0
• enhancements to the existing OPAC
– user suggestions from surveys
– “2.0” inspired features
– borrowing good ideas from other web sites
– new features launched with no/low publicity
– “perpetual beta”
• required staff buy-in and a willingness to
experiment and take risks

Spell Checker
• we monitored keyword searches over a six
month period and discovered approx
23% of searches gave zero results
– most OPACs present the user with a “dead
end” page
– a good search engine should still give the user
options on a failed search (“did you mean?”)


Spell Checker


Keyword Suggestions
• failed keyword searches are cross
referenced with www.answers.com to
provide new search suggestions


Keyword Suggestions


Borrowing Suggestions

• we had details of over 2,000,000 CKOs
spanning 10 years stored in the library
management system and gathering virtual
dust
• Web 2.0 – “Data is the Next Intel Inside1”
• historic circulation data can be mined2 to
uncover the hidden trends and links
between potentially disparate library items

Borrowing Suggestions


Ratings and Comments


Other Editions
• uses FRBR-y web services provided by
OCLC and LibraryThing to locate other
editions and related works within local
holdings
– OCLC’s xISBN1
– LibraryThing’s thingISBN2


Other Editions


Email Alerts


RSS feeds


“If you build it, will they come?”
also borrowed other editions serendipity did you mean

7000

6000

5000
number of clicks

4000

3000

2000

1000

0

Mar-07

May-07
May-06

Nov-06

Dec-06
Oct-06

Apr-07
Aug-06

Feb-07
Sep-06

Jan-07
Jun-06

Jul-06

Jun-07

Jul-07

Increase in Usage
quot;Did You Meanquot; - 2006/07 Compared

2500

2000
number of clicks

1500

1000

500

0
May June July
2006 2007

Increase in Usage
quot;People Who Borrowed This...quot; - 2006/07 Compared

3500

3000

2500
number of clicks

2000

1500

1000

500

0
May June July
2006 2007

Lipstick on the Pig
“We need to focus more energy on
important, systemic changes rather than
cosmetic ones. If your system is more
difficult to search and less effective than
Amazon.com, then you have work to do.
After all, you can put lipstick on a pig, but
it's still very much a pig.”
(Roy Tennant, Library Journal, 2005)


Problems ...Challenges!
• there was no formal process for discussing
and agreeing new OPAC features
– so we organised a web/library 2.0 afternoon for staff
• some initial scepticism from staff
– would users think borrowing suggestions were formal
recommendations from the library?
– aren’t borrowing suggestions just for selling books?
– how relevant will the suggestions be?
• would sudden changes confuse users?


Solutions
• encourage suggestions from staff
• include users in decision making process
• encourage play and experimentation
• don’t be afraid to make mistakes!
• look widely for ideas
• “build crappy prototypes fast”
• monitor usage
– if usage is poor then remove it

Searching for books by colour


Search visualisations


CKO visualisations


Other Libraries
• Ann Arbor District Library
• North Carolina State University (Endeca)
• LibraryThing for Libraries
• Open Source OPACs


Ann Arbor District Library
• early adopter of “2.0” (John Blyberg)
• OPAC deeply embedded in Library portal
• virtual catalogue cards (with graffiti!)
• user tagging, ratings, and reviews
• borrowing suggestions
• RSS feeds
• http://www.aadl.org/catalog/


North Carolina State University
• facetted browsing
• http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/
• http://endeca.com


LibraryThing for Libraries
• integrates LibraryThing data into the OPAC
– tags
– borrowing suggestions
– other editions
• www.librarything.com/forlibraries/


Open Source OPACs
• Scriblio (formerly WPOpac)
– uses WordPress (blogging software)
• VuFind
– uses PHP & MySQL
• Lucene & Solr
– Project Backlight (Univ. of Virginia)
– FacBackOPAC
– Huddersfield (blog post)


The Traditional Vendors
• Talis Platform
– “an environment for building next generation
applications and services”
• Ex Libris Primo
– “one-stop solution for the discovery and
delivery of local and remote resources”
• Innovative Interfaces Encore
– “goes beyond the online-catalog model to
provide a better patron experience ”

OPAC 2.0
• “The best way to predict the future is to
invent it.”
(Alan Kay, computer scientist and
former Xerox PARC researcher)

• “The future is here. It's just not widely
distributed yet.”
(William Gibson, science fiction author
and creator of the word “cyberspace”)


OPAC 2.0
• shopping list of features:
– spell checking (“did you mean?”)
– relevancy ranking, search refining, and facets
– manual recommendations (“best bets”)
– automated suggestions (based on both global and user-
specific data)
– user participation (“read-write OPAC”)
– foster communities of interest


OPAC 2.0
• shopping list of features:
– improve serendipity
– expose hidden links between items
– APIs and Web Services to expose data
– promote unintended uses
– user personalisation
– embed external data (e.g. Wikipedia, LibraryThing)
– RSS feeds and OpenSearch


Quick OPAC Survey – Features
• Please rate how important you feel the following
features are to your users in a modern OPAC.
– embedding the OPAC in external sites (e.g. portals) 8.7
– “did you mean” spelling suggestions 8.6
– enriched content (book covers, ToCs, etc) 8.4
– RSS feeds (e.g. new books, searches, etc) 7.8
– facetted browsing (e.g. like NCSU Library) 7.4
– “people who borrowed this” suggestions 6.5
– user tagging of items (i.e. folksonomy) 6.1
– user added comments and reviews 6.0
– personalised suggestions (e.g. like Amazon) 5.9
– user added ratings for items 5.7


Implementation of Features
500 10
number of respondents (total 729)

9
400 8

importance (out of 10)
7
300 6
5
200 4
3
100 2
1
0 0

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Talis Insight 2007: Inspiration u Change
06/Nov/2007 for #59
already got getting soon importance

Features – Future Trends?
Rate of Increase of Feature Implementation

600% 10
9
500%
500%
8

7
400%
% increase

6
311%
279%
300% 5
4
189%
200% 167%
3
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130% 122%
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% increase in quot;getting soonquot; compared to quot;already gotquot; importance

Importance (getting soon)
Feature Importance

10 10
9.1
8.9
8.8 8.8 8.7

9 9
8.4
8.0
8.7 8.6 7.8
8.4
8 8
7.4
7.8 7.0
7.4
7 7

6.5
6 6
6.1 6.1 6.0
5.7
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Technology Adoption Lifecycle


Technology Adoption - Now


Technology Adoption – Q1 08?


Importance – UK respondents
UK respondents non-UK respondents

10 10

8.8
8.7
9 9
8.6

7.9

8.6
7.7
8 8
8.1
7.8
6.7
7 7
7.2
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6.5
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Thank you!


Talis Insight 2007

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