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The Fountain and the Mountain

Or, Collaboration. It’s the Washington Way. The Fountain and the Mountain. UW Libraries Environment (2006). 36,000 students over 3 campuses Collections Over 6 million volumes Ranked 14 th among ARL Libraries Innovative Interfaces ILS, WebPAC & Link Resolver

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The Fountain and the Mountain

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  1. Or, Collaboration. It’s the Washington Way. The Fountain and the Mountain

  2. UW Libraries Environment (2006) • 36,000 students over 3 campuses • Collections • Over 6 million volumes • Ranked 14th among ARL Libraries • Innovative Interfaces ILS, WebPAC & Link Resolver • Summit Union Catalog (III Inn-Reach)

  3. 2006 Zeitgeist • University of California Bibliographic Services Task Force. Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University (December 2005). http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/BSTF/Final.pdf • Karen Calhoun. The Changing Nature of the Catalog and Its Integration with Other Discovery Tools (March 2006). http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf • Jackie Byrd et al. A White Paper on the Future of Cataloging at Indiana University (2006). http://www.iub.edu/~libtserv/pub/Future_of_Cataloging_White_Paper.pdf

  4. Early 2006 Systems • No commercially ILS-based systems available (although a few in development) • NCSU development of ENDECA

  5. Describe the Problem... What are the UW Libraries’ business objectives? Getting our information where the users are Making cataloging relevant Satisfy user needs - today – forcing them to chose between quality & convenience, and convenience always wins Make quality convenient Provost focuses: undergraduate initiative, global/international education Users Served by UW Libraries Undergrads, grads, faculty, staff Any web user (try to answer their ref questions; doc delivery if they will pay) Borrowers not affiliated with UW K-12 Consortial partners Researchers/scholars @ other institutions

  6. Get Administrative Support...

  7. Brainstorm...

  8. Develop Scenarios... Fulfillment scenarios 1) UW patron/uw materials/uw pickup An undergraduate student is searching google for materials on political refugees. The search finds several books that look interesting to the student. With a click they are able to launch worldcat.org that lets the student determine that the book is held by the UW libraries. The student is able to click the “Get It” button and is asked to authenticate themselves as a UW patron. They are then able to indicate where they would like to pick up the item on the UW Seattle, Bothell or Tacoma campus. The request appears in the UW III circulation system as if the hold had been placed through the local catalog. 2) UW patron/uw & summit materials/ not UW pickup A graduate student in the ISchool’s distance learning program is living in Portland. They search Worldcat.org and find a range of materials they need, some held at the UW others not. The student is able to use the “Get It” button, authenticate and indicate where they would like to pick up materials; in this case they want to pick materials up not at a UW campus library but at the University of Portland. In this scenario, unbeknownst to the student, some of the requests may be placed on UW materials, others on materials held at another Summit library. (This models includes PickUp Anywhere and SameSiteRequest features we currently have.) MS Word Citation Scenario A researcher (undergraduate student, graduate student or faculty member) is writing a paper in MS Word (or another major commercial word processing program). She has written portions of the paper but needs to read more literature. She opens a window within Word to search a database of articles and books (e.g. WorldCat.org). She sorts through results and chooses the material that looks best and reads it online. When she finds needed quotations or illustrations, she highlights them and cuts/pastes or drags them into the paper. Having already set citation formats and footnote style in preferences, she double clicks to insert footnotes, or they are inserted automatically when the text is pasted. She builds a bibliography at the end of the paper by dragging citations from articles and books into the bibliography section, where they are formatted and alphabetized automatically. Citations from footnotes from the text have already been automatically inserted into the bibliography. A plagiarism filter scores the paper to indicate whether too much material has been taken from external sources.

  9. Understand Your Developer...

  10. Articulate a Vision... Why test the WorldCat search tool? • Strategic plan vision: To build or integrate new tools and services for information discovery and delivery. • Involvement in a beta allows us to help shape the future of this tool • Makes our resources visible to users where they are: Google, Microsoft Live Academic, etc. • OCLC is in a position to work with national and international partners to move libraries to a network level • Research shows that most users prefer simple and direct search mechanisms, and become overwhelmed by multiple choices • Make our quality resources convenient for users to find and get • Designed with the user in mind

  11. And a major Why: Too many silos

  12. Be The First On Your Block... The WorldCat Local pilot will test new functionality that allows users to place requests, gain online access, or request an interlibrary loan within WorldCat.org. Libraries and groups participating in the WorldCat Local pilot include: University of Washington Peninsula Library System in California Libraries in Illinois, including:... The University of Washington Libraries will be first to pilot WorldCat Local with OCLC in April.  Other institutions will follow.  OCLC will examine results of the pilot to determine a production schedule. .... OCLC will test interoperability with systems used by participating pilot libraries, including Innovative Interfaces, SirsiDynix, and ExLibris Voyager.

  13. Be Ready to Exit...

  14. Know Your Data & System... • While searching on WorldCat, I found the following: Records, 1970-1979 (inclusive). by Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession. Type: Archival Material Language: English OCLC: 122576383 However, when I click the "libraries" tab, I get a message stating that "no libraries with the specified item were found." Is it possible to find out where these records are located? Thanks much! • Owning library’s records are suppressed in WorldCat

  15. Understand the Development Culture...

  16. Understand Your Own Corporate Culture... I agree with all my colleagues who have so rationally made the case for making the UW-Only Catalog the default catalog on our home page.  When users go to www.lib.washington.edu, they logically expect to search for items held by the UW Libraries.  (When I go to the Seattle Public Library Web site, I expect to search for books held at Seattle Public--not Denver Public or Poughkeepsie Public.)  If they don't find what they need in our catalog, users generally know to look for other catalogs to search (WorldCat or Summit), or they ask for help from library staff.  This has been standard operating procedure among library users for many years.I'm sorry but I have to respectfully disagree.  The fact that summit borrowing pretty immediately shot up can be interpreted in many different ways.  The interpretation that I choose to put on it is that users didn't know about Summit and weren't asking.  Instead, they were going to non-library alternatives (at least this is the view that our usability interview subjects report).  Asking a librarian wasn't even on the chart (which corresponds to the research OCLC has done).

  17. Understand Your Corporate Culture... It's all well-and-good that our Interlibrary Loan statistics have shot up, but one has to wonder how many of the items obtained by ILL were actually checked out and used.  Did users really understand what they were requesting?  And did they have the time and patience to wait for their items to arrive, or while waiting, did they manage to find other resources to use instead? I don't know...did you ask all 36,000 visitors (not visits, visitors) that connected to WCL last month?  There are a *ton* of assumptions in these statements.  Jennifer can speak to the specific questions that were asked of usability subjects...the feedback that we have received through question point did not address any of this, but did address problems in being sent to Summit ("experienced" users wanted to put a hold on a local copy thinking that they would get a longer loan period...maybe yes, maybe no, if someone else asks for it, then the item gets recalled) and in WCL leaving the user stranded or not providing an actual option (which OCLC is working on).  We're working on changing the "Request Item" text so it includes a time frame (to better manage expectations)).Yes, there are a lot of problems that we still need to fix.  We still need to know what doesn't work for users.  But WCL has the *potential* to do waaaaay more than the library catalog every could.  I'm tired of public service staff who think they have a monopoly on the 'user experience' and that their users 'think like them' and that these assumptions (and not data, either quantitative or qualitative) are what drive service decisions.  --Steve

  18. Plan For Success... 59% increase in consortial borrowing 101% increase in interlibrary borrowing

  19. In Summary • Describe the Problem • Get Administrative Support • Brainstorm • Develop Scenarios • Understand Your Developer • Articulate a Vision • Be The First On Your Block • Be Ready to Exit • Know Your Data & System • Understand the Development Culture • Understand Your Own Corporate Culture • Plan For Success

  20. Questions? Steve Shadle shadle@uw.edu

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