The MALIBU Search Engine: Exploring User Needs in a Hybrid World

Jessie M.N. HeyIntelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group

Project MALIBU – University of Southampton Librariesjmnh@ecs.soton.ac.ukThe Future is Hybrid

British Library 1/11/2000

Focus of workshop

Searching the hybrid library Developing the MALIBU search engine

(GIGA) An example Towards our vision

With Valeda Dent (KCL project manager) and Michael Cave (Oxford technical officer)

Creating the hybrid library To bring together a wide range of

new alternative technologies plus the electronic products and services already in libraries, and the historical functions of our local, physical libraries, into well organised, accessible hybrid libraries (JISC circular 3/97)

Recent hybrid library statistics!Two extremes: Southampton libraries have 42,752m of

shelving, of which 35,300m or 83% were occupied at the time of the measure. This is roughly equivalent to the distance from Southampton to Portsmouth.

Southampton IAM group prints 10,000 pages every 3.5 weeks searching the web, using up a laser printer toner cartridge

Music resources room example Bringing CDs from department to new

Electronic Information Services Wing for greater organisation

Videos, tapes and CDs and equipment Close to music books and scores Exploring more efficient ways of delivering eg

digitization experiments (with IAM group and archives) of Norman del Mar sound archive

Storing on IAM group 200GB server Student project exploring bandwidth issues Exploring integrating CD listening with digital

working

What needs adding? Survey showed demand for

more integrated access to relevant resources

To search out web based resources as well as traditional catalogues

A prime candidate for experimenting with our MALIBU search engine

Questionnaires to Humanities Staff

All kind of resources used e.g.:

E-journals, abstracts and microforms Radio and online newspapers Card catalogues and archives Librarians and students General and very specialised web

resources

MALIBU search engine Developed from preprototype search

engine for the Humanities supported by user and librarian testing and reviews of searching methods for paper and digital resources, both local and remote

Modelling the hybrid library: Project MALIBUJMN Hey and A Wissenburg The New Review of

Information and Library Research 1998 103-110

Search Agent Objectives To expand horizons for Humanities staff

and students in a managed hybrid library environment

Both to search relevant web based resources in addition to traditional catalogues

And archives and other ‘hidden’ databases in addition to the web

To develop a prototype providing searching facilities across a selected no. of heterogeneous priority targets

A Global Information Gathering Agent Consists of a series of independent

agents, which can communicate through a meta-agent

Aim - flexible and efficient system Degree of user profiling – matching

users at Oxford, Southampton and KCL

Options to change targets searched and to work with results

GIGA

Malibu's Search Agent Signup

Welcome! Please provide the following information about yourself. This information will help the system to set up a personal user profile for you.

Your First Name

Your SurnamePlease provide a Passwordit will not be shown as you typePlease enter your Password a second time

Please give your e-mail address(optional)

Your Department

Your User Type

Please click on "Submit" (below) when you are finished entering your information, or "Clear" to start again.

An introductory profile is set up but can be amended

A Personal Profile eg in History might include: Book catalogues (Southampton and COPAC) JSTOR history and American journals Papers of Palmerston and Wellington (at

Southampton) Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (at

King’s College, London) Refugee studies Catalogue (at Oxford) Survey of Jewish Archives (at Southampton) Google search engine Wifred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive

The next stage of exploration The Southampton Reserve Collection has some 1st

World War materials and some were digitized for a previous project in English and posted to a local site

We want to look further afield: Southampton’s WebCat JSTOR digitized History journals Perhaps other catalogues and archives A web search engine and different media

Amend profile to search relevant databases Southampton WebCat Oxford’s OLIS catalogue COPAC (The union catalogue of the Consortium of

University Research Libraries. Free bibliographic information on over 6 million titles)

Google search engine JSTOR history journals Papers of Senior UK Defence Personnel (catalogue

launched in Southampton June 2000) Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (at King’s

College, London)

And rank by priority

Researching the 1st world war trenches Some marked records from a Southampton GIGA search

(saved or emailed):

Wilfred Owen Archive at Oxford Audio of daily routine in front line trenches

Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archive (KCL) Sketches showing layout of trenches

Google Search Engine Trenches on the Web – reference library

Oxford OLIS Catalogue Lads: love poetry of the trenches compiled 1998

Southampton catalogue In the trenches of Stalingrad pub. 1948

NB No matches in JSTOR journals or Southampton online archives this time

Following on: The Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital

Archive looks useful – so click on the information button

What does it comprise? Virtually all of Owen’s original MSS for his war poetry, from various

sources 18 issues of The Hydra 20 Photos of Owen A selection of letters Owen wrote during his war service Official records related to Owen from PRO Selection of general material from war (photos, audio, video), from

IWM archives Relevant current day video & photographic material Other contemporary material (e.g. postcards)

Exploring in depth Explore a few resources: ahew4 Audio of Smell of trenches. by L. J. Hewitt amci1 Audio of Trench life. Shaving and washing by T. W.

McIndoe aoxl12 Audio of Daily routine in front line trenches. St by H.

Oxley aoxl18 Audio of Sanitary arrangements in trenches. by H. Oxley aoxl5 Audio of Journey to front line at Ypres Salient, by H.

Oxley

Link to the database for more detailed context based searching

http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/

And from our web search engine:An Internet History of the Great Warhttp://www.worldwar1.com

“one of the best online resources for teaching and learning about the First World War."Scout Report for Social Sciences8-Nov-1997

A useful exemplar Currently investigating the impact of the

search engine and its place within the user’s and library’s information landscape

Analysing advantages and disadvantages of technical model

Some conclusions: Can allow for easy distributed development But may need to accept less than full

features – use as a pointer Major challenge of database subscriptions

and features not remaining constant

Vision – to plug in new agents as databases become available or in demand

eg free Eprints software just being made available from our IAM group to institutions and departments to self archive scholarly research literature (modelled on Los Alamos preprint archive)

Could then add a database to search very recent work as well as traditionally published work together

The ideas of GIGA look forward to: Having your own intelligent agent

(your virtual ‘hybrarian’) to exploit to the full well organised and accessible libraries

Whether far afield or on your doorstep

Recent tests have shown users are enthusiastic to discover new resources and recommend new resources for inclusion

The MALIBU Search Engine: Exploring User Needs in a Hybrid World

Be our guest at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/malibu

Jessie M.N. HeyProject MALIBU – University of Southampton Libraries

jmnh@ecs.soton.ac.ukThe Future is Hybrid

British Library 1/11/2000