Breaking Up with MARC: Are We There Yet? 2017 MCLS Linked Data Summit (03.16.2017)
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An early experimenter with Zepheira's Linked Data for libraries discusses their experience with converting their MARC records to BIBFRAME/Linked Data and trying to measure the impact of this service on circulation, new borrower registrations, traffic counts, and Inter-Library Loans in 2016.
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Breaking Up with MARC: Are We There Yet? 2017 MCLS Linked Data Summit (03.16.2017)
- 1. Breaking Up with MARC AreWeThereYet? MCLS Linked Data Summit March 16, 2017 Andrea Kappler Cataloging Manager Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library
- 2. Disclaimers • I’m not a BIBFRAME expert • I’m not a webmaster or CS major • I’m older than MARC format • I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn Express
- 3. Why Dump MARC Format? • It’s old and inflexible • It’s designed for data strings, not things • It’s anti-social • It’s not the only game in town • It’s a proprietary format
- 4. Invisible Libraries • Data silos • Search engine optimization (SEO) • Library website + Online catalog ≠ to exposing library collections on theWeb
- 5. Invisible Libraries (cont.) • User search behavior (OCLC- “Perceptions of Libraries…” 2005) – 84% of information searches begin on the Internet – 1% of information searches begin on a library website • In 2010, 0% of users began their searches on a library website (“Perceptions” 2010) • In 2012, Google claimed it processed 1.2 trillion searches • In 2015, mobile Google searches took over desktop computer searches for the first time ever (smartphones only)
- 6. Linked Data • Structured data & shared vocabulary (Schema.org) • Shows relationships between data elements (people, places & things) • Google Knowledge Graphs, location-specific information (e.g., movie times for your neighborhood, restaurants near you, targeted advertisements)
- 7. What is BIBFRAME? • New bibliographic initiative • Standardized biblio-centric vocabulary • Flexible and extensible
- 8. What is BIBFRAME? (cont.) • Utilizes Linked Data – URIs vs. URLs • Emphasizes relationships • MARC Format replacement
- 9. BIBFRAME 2.0 Model Source: United States Library of Congress. Overview of the BIBFRAME 2.0 Model. https://www.loc.gov/bibframe/docs/bibframe2- model.html Website accessed February 9, 2017.
- 10. BIBFRAME for Civilians Cans of cat food analogy: • Cat food = Bibliographic & authority data • Sealed metal cans = MARC format • Cans in your cupboard =Traditional library catalog • Feed the neighborhood cat(s) = Get your library’s information out to patrons using theWeb
- 12. BIBFRAME for Civilians (cont.) • Open the cans = MARC format transformed into BIBFRAME/Linked Data (Zepheira) • Put the cat food on a plate = LD hosted on servers (Zepheira) • Cats smell the food & come running =Web crawlers find & index our Linked Data • Cats (and library directors) are happy!
- 14. BIBFRAME @ EVPL In 2015: • MCLS online class • LibHub Initiative • ILS vendor • Zepheira’s Early Experimenters Program
- 15. WhatWe’ve Noticed In 2016: • Older vs. newer titles • High publicity titles • Qualifier required • Not all formats represented together
- 17. The Library.Link Network landing page for this title in our library’s collection.
- 18. Our Encore catalog page for this title, after clicking on the Get it at the Library! button on the previous screen.
- 19. WhatWe’ve Noticed (cont.) • OverDrive • Books are sometimes “MIA” • No timeline for indexing • Other libraries’ links are displaying first
- 20. Linked Data Impact @ EVPL • Has it increased… – Web traffic? – Circulation? – New borrowers? – Foot traffic? – ILL lending?
- 21. Google Analytics • Trends, not specific data • User behavior or search bots? • Different interpretations
- 22. 2016 2015 1.) I missed work and sent no database extracts to Zepheira; 2.) Redirect to catalog on Library.Link landing page was removed
- 23. 2016 2017
- 24. Referrals=Circulation? • Physical materials • E-resources (e-books, e-audiobooks, streaming movies/music/TV shows) • Websites & databases
- 26. A Direct Correlation? Title Format Date Out Branch Date In Branch Frommer’s Kauai Book 1/20/2017 Central Library 2/6/2017 North Park The lost girls / Heather Young Book 1/27/2017 North Park 2/10/2017 North Park The pharaoh’s secret / Marissa Moss Book 1/7/2017 McSelf Check 1/25/2017 McCollough Human impact / Carole Garbunny Vogel Book 2/13/2017 Internet (renewal) 3/6/2017 Red Bank The readers of Broken Wheel recommend / Katarina Bivald E-book 1/29/2017 OverDrive 2/19/2017 OverDrive Between 1/1/17-3/1/17, 18 titles were referred from link.evpl.org to encore.evpl.org. These five were checked out (28%). Did users find them on the Web? Is this evidence of Linked Data working for us?
- 27. Circulation Statistics Year Total Circulation Difference % Change 2015 2,313,259 N/A N/A *2016 2,314,534 +1,275 +.05% *First year of Linked Data with Zepheira Should we call them “Circumstantial” Statistics?
- 28. Patron Registration Statistics Patron Category Total Registrations Difference % Change 2015 *2016 Adult (18+) 51,398 48,503 -2,895 -5.6% YA (ages 15-17) 6,026 5,340 -686 -11.4% Juvenile (ages 0-14) 6,096 5,444 -652 -10.7% New Borrower 3,869 3,513 -356 -9.2% ILL 2,495 1,247 -1,248 -50% Online Registrant 79 120 +41 +34.2% *First year of Linked Data with Zepheira
- 29. FootTraffic Location Name 2015 *2016 Difference % Change Central Library 787,561 **500,861 -286,700 -36.4% East 28,694 25,690 -3,004 -10.5% McCollough 196,812 194,615 -2,197 -1.1% North Park 219,073 140,980 -78,093 -35.6% Oaklyn 177,927 122,931 -54,996 -30.9% Red Bank 120,816 119,483 -1,333 -1.1% Stringtown 37,388 35,041 -2,347 -6.3% West 32,076 30,052 -2,024 -6.3% *First year of Linked Data with Zepheira **Major construction project all year long, blocking access to the main entrance, meeting rooms and parking lot at Central Library
- 30. ILL Lending Month/Year # of ILL Requests February 2015 449 *February 2016 558 February 2017 341 *First year of Linked Data with Zepheira Data compiled from OCLC Statistics (WorldShare Interlibrary Loan) on 3/13/17
- 31. HaveWe Fed the Cats? • Jury is still out • Market Linked Data • Time will tell
- 32. What Hasn’t Changed @EVPL • Still using MARC format • Still doing authority control • Still using same ILS software • No Linked Data in our catalog
- 33. Moving Forward • Continue with Zepheira • Watch BIBFRAME development • Communicate with ILS vendor • Evaluate Linked Data’s impact
- 34. “If libraries cling to outdated standards, they will find it increasingly difficult to serve their clients as they expect and deserve.” – Roy Tennant, “MARC Must Die”, 2002
- 35. Resources • “MARC Must Die” – RoyTennant, Library Journal, Oct. 15, 2002 – http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2002/10/ljarchives/marc-must-die/#_ • “OCLC WorksTowards Linked Data Environment” – Matt Enis, Library Journal, Feb. 17, 2015 – http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/02/technology/oclc-works-toward-linked-data- environment-ala-midwinter-2015/ • “Ending the Invisible Library” – Matt Enis, Library Journal, Feb. 24, 2015 – http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/02/technology/ending-the-invisible-library-linked-data/ • Googlebot (explains how Google’s web crawling bot works) – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182072?hl=en • “Google Launches Knowledge Graph to Provide Answers, Not Just Links” – http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-knowledge-graph-121585 • “Google Now Handles at Least 2Trillion Searches PerYear” – Danny Sullivan, May 24, 2016 – http://searchengineland.com/google-now-handles-2-999-trillion-searches-per-year-250247 • “It’s Official: Google Says More Searches Now On Mobile Than On Desktop” – Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land, May 5, 2015 – http://searchengineland.com/its-official-google-says-more-searches-now-on-mobile-than-on-desktop- 220369
- 36. Resources • Linked Data – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_data • Schema.org – http://schema.org/ • RDF (Resource Description Framework) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework • “The ILS and Linked Data: AWhite Paper” – Georgia Fujikawa, Innovative Interfaces (Aug. 2015) – http://t.co/L4Nw3GFyeB • BIBFLOW at UC Davis – https://bibflow.library.ucdavis.edu/
- 37. Resources • BIBFRAME home page – http://bibframe.org/ • LC’s BIBFRAME page – https://www.loc.gov/bibframe/ • “MARC21 to BIBFRAME: Outcomes, Possibilities, and New Directions” (New Zealand Library and Information Management Journal, v. 55, no. 1, Dec. 2014): – http://www.lianza.org.nz/sites/default/files/NZLIMJ%20Vol%2055%20Issue% 201%20Dec%202014%20-%20Rollitt.pdf • Denver PL’s BIBFRAME pilot and conversion of 840,000 MARC records to BIBFRAME resources: – http://copia.posthaven.com/denver-public-library-data-pilot-release – http://copia.posthaven.com/early-progress-on-denver-public-library-slash- number-visiblelibrary – https://www.denverlibrary.org/blog/rachel-f/dpl-announces-linked-data- launch
- 38. OCLC Research Publications • “Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources: A Report to theOCLC Membership” (290 pages, 2005) – https://www.oclc.org/content/dam/oclc/reports/pdfs/Percept_all.pdf • “Perceptions of Libraries • “The Library in the Life of the User: Engaging with PeopleWhereThey Live and Learn” (2015) – http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/2015/oclcresearch-library-in-life-of-user.html • “Shaping the Library to the Life of the User: Adapting, Empowering, Partnering, Engaging” (2015) – http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/2015/oclcresearch-shaping-library-to-life-of-user-2015.html • “The Relationship between BIBFRAME andOCLC’s Linked-Data Model of Bibliographic Description:AWorking Paper” – Carol Jean Godby, Senior Research Scientist,OCLC Research (2013) – http://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/publications/library/2013/2013-05.pdf • “Common Ground: Exploring Compatibilities Between the Linked Data Models of the Library of Congress andOCLC” – Carol Jean Godby, OCLC Research; Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress (2015) – http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/2015/oclcresearch-loc-linked-data-2015.html • Library Linked Data in theCloud: OCLC’s Experiments with New Models of Resource Description – Carol Jean Godby, ShenghuiWang, Jeffery K. Mixter (140 pages, 2015) – http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/2015/oclcresearch-library-linked-data-in-the-cloud.html
- 39. Questions? Andrea Kappler Cataloging Manager EvansvilleVanderburgh Public Library andreak@evpl.org 812-428-8398
Notas do Editor
- I’m still learning about BIBFRAME and many of the other things I’ll be presenting on today. What I will tell you about BIBFRAME will be a high-level overview, with some examples of what it can do and who is using it or experimenting with it. I’ll also discuss some of BIBFRAME’s potential and what libraries need to know about preparing for BIBFRAME. My educational background is English literature and History. I love to read, I love learning about history and I have an MLS. I’m not a webmaster, I’ve never created a web page, and I don’t have a CS degree. I’m just a little older than MARC format. I’ve been using it since I began working in libraries in 1989 (28 years). I hope everyone got a chuckle out of this last one! I stayed at my brother’s house, because he lives just 20 minutes away from here.
- There are quite a few reasons why MARC format has become antiquated and libraries should consider dumping it. Refer to Roy Tennant’s 2002 article, “MARC Must Die” Old & inflexible – It was created in the mid-late 1960s to for the sole purpose of speeding up the creation of card catalog data and for enabling the efficient distribution of that data, which it has done a fine job of for almost 50 years. But now, nobody produces cards from it anymore and even OCLC finally stopped producing cards last year (they produced cards from 1971-Oct. 21, 2015, with a peak of 141 million cards produced per year and a total of 1.9 billion cards produced over the years. The last card printed was for Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty). Inflexible – Although MARC21 Format has been updated to accommodate many elements from the new RDA cataloging guidelines, it’s still not suitable for use with RDA nor is it useful with the current Web, which is based on individual pieces of data about things. After completing RDA testing, the Library of Congress declared MARC format does not allow for full implementation of RDA. Communities outside of libraries cannot add their own descriptive elements to MARC format and updating MARC format is done through a committee process within the library community. Data strings, not things – MARC format was designed for strings of data to identify entities. MARC makes reliable data. But it cannot easily show relationships between those entities. The current Web is about small bits of data which can be assembled as needed by computers and joined together to show relationships between those pieces of data. Imagine Lego blocks and the things you can build with them, compared to a bag of string and what you can’t build with that. MARC is machine readable only within library systems and by human eyes, but it’s not machine actionable. Anti-social – It’s not web-friendly or discoverable by web-crawling bots or spiders. It can’t integrate with the Web or be connected to anything on the Web. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing can’t crawl the Internet and index MARC catalog records, so they’re not searchable, therefore they’re not findable. Other formats – Digital repositories use Dublin Core and other data storage systems (OAI-PMH, EAD), which can’t communicate with MARC. Some libraries (like ours) have their resources described with MARC format and with Dublin Core (e.g., CONTENTdm), but those are two different systems for storing and sharing bibliographic data. Publishers use ONIX for their information. None of those metadata systems can communicate with one another. Proprietary format – MARC format is used exclusively by libraries. No other memory institution (museums, archives) or business/organization uses it to organize and store their data. MARC records can only be read by specific software provided by ILS vendors, which is a highly specialized market. MARC format keeps our data in silos which can’t be penetrated by modern search engine crawlers.
- Libraries have rich stores of carefully curated bibliographic and authoritative data about all kinds of wonderful resources, from physical to digital collections. But with the exceptions of our websites, our collections are virtually invisible on the Web. You can’t Google the name of a book or a movie or an e-book and see that your local public library has a copy of it for you to borrow. Why are our libraries invisible? Data silos – Since MARC format is a proprietary format used only by libraries, we’re essentially locking away our collections in impenetrable data silos. MARC format cannot be discovered by web crawlers and it cannot be found by Internet search software. SEO – Libraries have traditionally avoided having search engine web crawlers index their pages, mostly due to concerns about patron privacy and later, of hacking. But being so cautious about the way the web used to be has kept us and our collections from being found by search engines. We need to get them optimized for search engines and for discovery on the open web. Website + online catalog – Just because your library has a website and an online catalog does NOT mean your collections are visible to your users, especially those who start their searches on Google or other search engine pages. It assumes they know to come to your library’s website, find the search box for your online catalog, then start their search there. I’m not saying nobody does this, but there’s plenty of data gathered by OCLC and others saying almost everybody starts their search for information with a search engine, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. When they do that, they’re bypassing your online catalog and they’re never seeing that your library may have what they want.
- Libraries have rich stores of carefully curated bibliographic and authoritative data about all kinds of wonderful resources, from physical to digital collections. But with the exceptions of our websites and some federated searching on our catalogs that includes our journals, our collections are virtually invisible on the Web. You can’t Google the name of a book or a movie or an e-book and see that your local public library has a copy of it for you to borrow. Why are our libraries invisible? User search behavior – OCLC’s Perceptions of Libraries report in 2005 revealed some interesting, if not shocking data about user behavior when people start their searches for information. 84% of information searches begin on the Internet – this is from the 2005 Perceptions of Libraries report compiled by OCLC 1% of information searches begin on the library website – this is also from the 2005 Perceptions report 2010 – 0% of users start their searches on library websites, according to OCLC’s Perceptions of Libraries report compiled in 2010 2012 – 1.2 trillion Google searches; probably processing more than 2+ million per year 2015 – Mobile Google searches surpass desktop searches for first time
- How do we make libraries more visible on the Web? We need to understand and start using Linked Data, because that’s what a growing proportion of the web is starting to use. Structured data & shared vocabulary (Schema.org) – In 2011, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Bing! Joined an alliance to create Schema.org, which is a collection of standard data schemas with a shared vocabulary. Relationships- Allows web designers to include information in HTML pages that identifies entities and relationships between entities. Also makes the data recognizable by search engine spiders, which can consume and index the data. Google Knowledge Graphs, etc. – You’re already seeing and using Linked Data on the Web. Google Knowledge Graphs are one example. Other examples are location-specific information, which have context and meaning with regards to your search, your location, and your interests.
- New bibliographic initiative – A web-friendly linked data format for library bibliographic information that’s focused on bibliographic data and is built on Linked Data principles. It was created to help convert legacy MARC format to Linked Data. It can also be used to create new bibliographic information as Linked Data. BIBFRAME will make use of existing authority records and string-based labels due to being based on MARC format. Standardized biblio-centric vocabulary – BIBFRAME’s standardized vocabulary is built upon concepts which are unique to the bibliographic world, yet it also includes vocabulary terms from schema.org, which is used by the wider Web community. Flexible and extensible – Unlike MARC format, BIBFRAME and schema.org are flexible and are built to be changeable, as both knowledge and technology evolve. This will help the diverse worlds of libraries, museums, and archives to develop their own flavors of BIBFRAME, yet still be able to share their bibliographic data on the Web.
- Utilizes Linked Data – Linked Data is another web standard that has been a concept for 10 years, ever since Tim Berners-Lee coined the term in a design note about the Semantic Web project. Linked Data uses URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) to denote things. These are static URLs assigned to pieces of information. Linked Data allows information to be exposed, shared, and connected to other pieces of data, information, and knowledge. Linked Data is everywhere, it allows us to use the Web like a single global database, performing complex queries over multiple pages and data sources. We’re already using it every day. URIs vs. URLs – URIs identify real-world objects (people, cars, books, unicorns); URLs are links to documents on the Web. The URIs are in HTTP format, so they can be looked up by computers. Emphasizes relationships – It emphasizes relationships between creators and their works, between works, and between derivatives of works. It can eventually show relationships between library data and other data on the web, such as your physical location with respect to the user’s physical location (e.g., location-based search results). MARC format replacement – Yes, you heard me right. It is meant to replace MARC Format- eventually, as we’ll discuss later. This is also called the Semantic Web, which is built on bits of data that are searchable and can be connected together with stable HTTP links called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). This is called Linked Data and you use it every day, even if you don’t realize it.
- Here’s an illustration of the current model of BIBFRAME.
- In case that was too abstract I have an analogy for you I used with our library’s lawyer when explaining to him what BIBFRAME/Linked Data does for our library’s catalog data. He mistakenly thought that having our catalog on the Web and using the Dewey Decimal Classification meant our collection was findable on the Internet. In my frustration in explaining BIBFRAME/Linked Data, I came up with the analogy of cans of cat food.
- BIBFRAME @ EVPL MCLS online class – In 2015, I convinced our then-director to let me take the Linked Data for the Practical Practitioner online class from Zepheira at the discounted price offered through MCLS. LibHub Initiative- This 2014 partnership of 12 public libraries and Zepheira intrigued me, because it included so many public libraries, many of whom our library look up to as leaders in the public library world ILS vendor – Throughout the summer and fall of 2015, I asked our ILS vendor specific questions about their plans for incorporating BIBFRAME and Linked Data into future versions of their software. I got the runaround from them and they told me to read up on BIBFRAME before I asked them any more questions (I told them the reason I had all the questions is because I had taken the class from Zepheira, the same one their staff were taking that same year). In that timeframe, they’ve had two CEO changes, the person working as the liaison to Zepheira quit, and numerous other staff have quit too. They’re offering a service for their customers to extract their data and send it to Zepheira, but without any of the follow-up feedback and ongoing tweaking of the data Zepheira would provide to libraries working directly with them. Early Experimenters Program – At the end of 2015, we joined Zepheira’s Early Experimenters Program and we signed a one-year contract with them. I extracted our MARC records, converted them to MARC21XML, then uploaded them to Zepheira, who converted them to Linked Data and placed that data on their servers for Web search engine spiders to crawl and index.
- Here’s what we’ve noticed since starting with Zepheira: Older vs. newer titles – Older titles are more easily found, as long as searches contain enough of the title and maybe even the subtitle (e.g., not just one word searches) and as long as they’re available in one format. Newer titles are more hit and miss, because I update our catalog on a monthly basis (I’m now try to update it every two weeks). For this reason, new content is not going to show up on the Web as fast as it does in our online catalog. Newer titles will also more likely have more Linked Data about them already in existence on the Web, so they may be drowned out by author’s websites, media attention, and other non-book formats related to the title. High publicity titles – Titles in our collection which have received a high degree of media publicity or attention (local or national) don’t show up at the top of the screen, at least not now. We’re hoping this changes over time, especially as more libraries publish their bibliographic data as BIBFRAME/Linked Data. Qualifier required – We need to add the words “Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library” or “evpl” as a qualifier to the search string, at least for now. In the case of Orange is the New Black, which was our One Book One Community title in 2015, we might also have to use the word ‘portal’ that is part of the URL with the Library.Link Network. This is due to the fact the title has had so much publicity, especially in our own community. The hope is that someday, the need to use these qualifiers will be taken care of by the geo-location data we’ve given Zepheira, which will combine our bibliographic data with the user’s desktop or mobile IP address. Not all formats represented together – We’ve noticed that although we may have a title in multiple different formats (e.g., book, e-book, audiobook, e-audiobook), those formats are not all represented together on the search results page on the Web. This is true of the example for the title Predictably Irrational, which we have in 4 separate formats in our catalog, yet just two of them appear on the first page of the search results you’ll see on the next slide.
- There are two results for this title searched with the qualifier ‘evpl’, although they don’t represent the totality of our holdings for all formats we own or for which we provide access, such as e-books and e-audiobooks. These two examples are for an e-audiobook (1st result) and an e-book (2nd result).
- When you click on a link from the search results, you arrive at this landing page on the Library.Link Network created by Zepheira. It isn’t meant to replace our catalog, but it does let the user know they’ve found a library resource on the Web. There’s a blue Get it at the Library button users can click on to access this title in our catalog and check on availability. There’s a link taking them to an online registration screen on our website, where they can begin the process of getting a library card. They can also see all of our library’s branch locations in a Google map, as well as see additional links on our website.
- Here’s that title in our Encore catalog, where you can see it’s an e-book from OverDrive, which has a link where you can borrow it from OverDrive, without searching separately for it in that platform.
- OverDrive – Hits for the same title in our OverDrive collection appear in the results as well, regardless of whether we use “Evansville” or “evpl”, because both of those words are in our OverDrive name and URL. These results have been there for awhile, but we’ve not been looking for our catalog entries on the Internet, so they haven’t been a problem. However, they tend to crowd out the results from our Linked Data project with Zepheira, especially if the title is available as a print book in our collection. Zepheira is working with OverDrive to see what they can do about this. Books are “MIA” – Not every entry that floats to the top of the results list is the book version of a title, even if the book format is the only version in our catalog. It’s most likely the e-audiobook or e-book version of the title, which isn’t easily discerned from the initial results screen. You can add the words ‘book,’ ‘dvd,’ etc., to the search string, but you risk adding results for non-EVPL resources, like Amazon, to your list. The Linked Data resources on the Web also don’t exactly match what’s in our catalog, possibly because they’re scattered about the Internet, rather than collated neatly together as they are/would be in our catalog. No timeline for indexing – When I upload a copy of our database to Zepheira, there’s no timeline as to when we can expect those BIBFRAME resources to appear in search engine results. It’s out of our control and out of Zepheira’s control as to when and how the search bots determine which sites to crawl, how often they crawl them, and how many pages to fetch from the site, as well as indexing the data they find. Other libraries’ links displaying first- For some search results, the results of other libraries in the Library.Link Network are showing up before ours in the search results screen. I have a ticket open with Zepheira on this one, since I just began noticing it this year. Hopefully we can get that fixed soon.
- What type of impact has Linked Data made at EVPL? Has it increased… Web traffic?- Circulation?- New borrowers?- Foot traffic?-
- Google Analytics is the only way we can track web traffic into our Encore catalog. Lucky for me, this site was already set up in our GA account and all I have to do is look at referrals from the link.evpl.org site. Trends, not specific data – GA is good for showing trends, but not for helping you analyze specific data. There’s no way to tell how a searcher found a resource on the web and followed that link to our catalog. Did they do a title search, an author search, a subject or genre search? And without painstaking manual research one title at a time, there’s no way to see if they borrowed or downloaded or streamed it. User behavior or search bots? – When we first went live with Linked Data in January of 2016, it appeared to really take off with lots of hits to our Encore catalog page. But over time, it turns out these hits were either from search bots or they may have been from the redirect button on Zepheira’s landing page for each title. The redirect button hit the catalog after 10 seconds of the page being called up by a human (or a search bot). Now that the automatic redirect has been removed from that button, hits to our catalog have dropped drastically. Different interpretations – As with all statistics, they’re open to interpretation, depending on what you want them to say and what you know about the data used to compile them. As we’ll see in the upcoming slides, it’s easy to say Linked Data is either doing great or doing nothing for our library.
- A comparison of 2016 and 2015 external traffic coming from link.evpl.org to encore.evpl.org, which is our discovery layer. In 2015, we did not have the link.evpl.org URL set up with Zepheira, so the flat line for that year accurately measured zero referrals coming from that link. I uploaded our first dataset to Zepheira at the end of December 2015. The dataset was published as Linked Data after the start of the year. Although it’s hard to see from this yearlong overview of the data, our first external traffic referred from link.evpl.org started hitting our Encore server on Monday, January 25, 2016, with 5 sessions. It peaked on Tuesday, February 16, 2016, with 143 sessions. It basically bottomed out when I was out of town for a business trip in early June, from which I returned from with major lower back pain and leg numbness. I didn’t return to work for 6 weeks and I was unable to send updated datasets to Zepheira during those 6 weeks. I returned to work part-time in mid-July and I eventually returned to full-time on Aug. 8. Shortly after returning to work, I underwent surgery and was diagnosed with breast cancer on Aug. 30. I underwent yet another surgery in mid-Sept. and I began 6 weeks of radiation therapy in early October, finishing up the week of Thanksgiving. During this entire time, I was battling fatigue and trying to take unused vacation time, so I missed a lot of work through the end of the year. Also in that time frame of July-December, Zepheira made changes to the Take Me to the Library button, removing the automatic redirect to our catalog. But since I didn’t refresh our dataset during that time, I don’t know if that change affected the landing page for our data. There was a gap between May 26 and Dec. 15 when I didn’t refresh our dataset with Zepheira. In short, our external traffic to our Encore server basically flat-lined in that time period, making us pretty much invisible again. The lesson I learned from this was to do monthly or bi-monthly extracts of our catalog records and send them to Zepheira to refresh our data on their servers and on the Web.
- A comparison of Jan. 1-Mar. 1, for the years 2016-2017, both time periods for which we had linked data on the Web, so we had referrals to our Encore catalog coming from link.evpl.org. In contrast to the previous slide, the orange line is 2016. It looks great, because it reflects a period of time when the landing pages of our resources had an automatic redirect button to our catalog on them. Those redirects automatically looked up the resource in our catalog, even if the user didn’t want to do that and may have quickly exited the screen once getting to it. The blue line is 2017, which looks really bad in comparison to 2016, until you understand that the automatic redirect from the landing page to our catalog has been removed. The button is still there to take the user to our catalog, but they have to click it if they want to see the resource in our catalog. Maybe this is a slightly more accurate number, even if it’s not as high as it was a year ago. In the three columns where we saw increases between the two years, it appears the Bounce Rate, which is how long a user stays on a web page before leaving it for another page, has improved over a year ago. This could be because the automatic re-direct is gone now and users who click through to our catalog may actually want to go there. The number of Pages per Session has gone up, perhaps because users are browsing a bit longer in our catalog, once they get there. And the Average Session Duration has gone up, from less than a minute to more than a minute, again, perhaps because the user is actually there intentionally, rather than accidentally.
- Do referrals from link.evpl.org equal circulation? It’s really time-consuming to look for one-to-one ratios of relevance between referrals from link.evpl.org to circulation of materials, but it can be done. Physical materials – These are fairly easy to track, because I can look at the item record in Sierra and see if it was checked out in the same timeframe in which the link.evpl.org referral came to encore.evpl.org E-resources – These are a little harder to pin down, because we don’t track their circulation in our Sierra system. I can search either OverDrive or hoopla digital to see if they’ve circulated in the time period covered by the referral from link.evpl.org. Websites & databases- We have MARC records for these resources in our catalog, but we have no way to know if once they’ve found the record in Encore whether or not they clicked the link in that catalog record and followed it back out to the online resource.
- If you look at Referrals traffic, you can see the individual titles on the link.evpl.org site, as referenced from the /portal/ portion of the URL. It still doesn’t tell me whether or not a human or a computer search bot hit the link, nor does it tell me whether or not the material was borrowed from our library, but at least I know which titles were referred from link.evpl.org to our Encore discovery layer. Those are the titles I can search in Sierra to see if they’re checked out or I can look for them in OverDrive or hoopla if they’re e-resources from those collections.
- Out of 18 searches referred from link.evpl.org to encore.evpl.org between Jan. 1, 2017 and Feb. 28, 2017, these five books were checked out. That’s 28% of searches in that month resulting in checkouts of physical or virtual materials. Is this proof of Linked Data working for us? We don’t really know for sure. I have not compared direct searches of encore.evpl.org to see how many are/have been checked out in the same time period, because there are far more of them to research this way. Plus Linked Data is so new, it’s understandable that it’s not yet representing the bulk of searches coming into our Encore catalog right now.
- There was a tiny increase in our total circulation from 2015 to 2016. Was this attributable to Linked Data and more people finding our stuff on the Web, then checking it out? It’s hard to say for sure. Should we call them “Circumstantial” Statistics, instead of Circulation Statistics?
- I combined our 52 distinct patron types into these 6 main categories to look for any trends in the numbers. The only real increase was for Online Registrant. Was this increase due to people finding our Linked Data online, then creating new registrations online, so they can borrow our materials? Or is it because more people are online now than ever, so starting an online registration is a convenient process for them? One thing to note- New Borrower cards were suspended by our director on 2/27/2017, so we won’t have that data to compare going forward.
- So it looks like foot traffic didn’t go up as a result of our catalog being converted to Linked Data on the Web. Our Central Library location experienced a drop in foot traffic there, due to a year-long major construction project, which blocked access to the library’s parking lot and main entrance (to build a hotel and parking garage next to the library).
- There appears to be a bump in ILL lending requests for us in February of 2016, the first full month of having our Linked Data out on the Web. Was it due to Linked Data? Or just coincidence? That bump up has been erased by the February 2017 lending statistics.
- So, have we fed the cats? Are they finding our MARC data as Linked Data on the web? Jury is still out- It’s still hard to conclusively say Linked Data is working for us, any more than say conclusively that it’s not working for us. Market Linked Data – We’re still unsure of how to market our Linked Data experiment with Zepheira. Just doing searches on the Web still requires some kind of qualifier, which we’d need to train our staff and patrons to use. However, in the Library.Link Network, we now have the ability to find unique links we can use to publicize our titles on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, but we don’t have marketing staff to do that for us right now. Time will tell – We’re still so new at this that we need to have our Linked Data out there on the Web for a much longer time than just the past year or so. Search engine spiders are still discovering and indexing our rich bibliographic and authority data. BIBFRAME still has a long way to go before it’s considered a metadata modeling standard and a replacement for MARC format.
- Now that we’ve converted our catalog to BIBFRAME/Linked Data, many day-to-day activities and workflows haven’t changed. MARC format – We’re still using MARC format, because that’s the format still used by OCLC, EBSCO, OverDrive, Baker & Taylor, Brodart, etc., for bibliographic data. That’s the only format allowed in our ILS and it’s the only format we receive from our various MARC records vendors. Authority control – We’re still doing authority control as we’ve always done it, verifying headings in each bibliographic record and using Marcive as our main source of authority records. ILS software – We’re still using Sierra for staff functions and our public catalogs are available in our Encore and Classic Catalog versions. As are all libraries, we’re at the mercy of our ILS vendor when it comes to using MARC format and when we’ll maybe someday get to use Linked Data in our catalogs. No Linked Data in our catalog – We’re not adding any Linked Data to our catalog, because it’s structurally impossible to do so. We don’t have a triple-store database with Linked Data in it. Zepheira is housing that data for us and if we ever decide to cancel our contract with Zepheira, they’ll give us our data back (not that we have anywhere to put it right now!).
- Continue with Zepheira – For the rest of this year, we’ll continue sending Zepheira copies of our database, converted to MARC21XML first, for them to convert to BIBFRAME and place on the Web for search bots to crawl and index. We’ll continue working with them to fine-tune any part of the process over which they have control. Watch BIBFRAME development – We’ll continue to watch BIBFRAME’s development as LC, OCLC, Zepheira, and other major players continue to develop BIBFRAME vocabularies. Communicate with ILS vendor – We’ll continue talking with Innovative’s upper management and telling them how important BIBFRAME is to our library and our visibility on the web. We know Zepheira’s solution isn’t the final end-point with BIBFRAME, but if ILS vendors don’t invest in developing a software architecture that can handle the triple-store database required by BIBFRAME, it very well may be the best solution. I’m attending the Innovative Users Group meeting April 2-5, 2017 and there are several BIBFRAME/Linked Data sessions scheduled. Evaluate Linked Data’s impact – I’ll continue working with Google Analytics to see what information it gives me. I’ll also continue looking at things like patron registrations, ILL borrowing requests, and foot traffic to our buildings, where we can measure those things.
- I want to leave you with this one last quote to ponder.