worldcat at ut by ronda rowe, university of texas at austin
DESCRIPTION
Part of Morning Preconference, Wednesday 11/03/10A Comparative Overview of Journal Discovery Systems: Library Users Offer Their ExperiencesSpeakers: George Machovec –Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries; Rebecca Lenzini –The Charleston Company; Dennis Brunning - Arizona State University; Ronda Rowe - University of Texas at Austin; Martha Whittaker – George Washington University Libraries; Amanda Price – Mississippi State UniversitySummon (Serials Solutions), EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), OCLC WorldCat Local, Encore Synergy (III) and PrimoCentral (ExLibris) all represent a new class of discovery systems for libraries. Based on the success of Google Scholar, each of these solutions combines journal literature, MARC record data and digital repository metadata under a single umbrella. This program will bring together librarians to discuss what they are doing in regard to enhancing their next generation interface. This program will look at how different services have been integrated and used at local libraries. What differentiates these offerings and what solution(s) might work best for your library?TRANSCRIPT
WorldCat @UTImplementing WorldCat Local
Ronda RoweCharleston Conference
November 3, 2010
WorldCat Local from OCLC• A localized version of the OCLC database
• Main index has almost 1 billion records
• Although many fewer unique records
• Tremendous installed customer base
WorldCat Local from OCLC• Article level data (not historically part of
OCLC)
• Some loaded in WCL index
• Some brought in through federated search
• Probably represents the largest challenge
The OCLC database is quite a legacy• WCL has inherited many things from OCLC
• Different cataloging standards
• FRBR
• RDA
• Problems between local and OCLC holdings
• Issues with loading/tagging vendor records
What does OCLC uniquely offer?• Long history of cooperative catalog
• Organization greater than any single library
• Stature to stand with Google
• Ability to reduce redundancy of work
• Ability to pool our knowledge for discovery
• Central service for technical support
Implementation timeline
• First presentation to staff – February 2007
• Implementation begins – May 2007
• First pass all paper based
• Link added to website – June 2009
• Soft-roll out without much fanfare
• Not the default search
Only implemented Discovery piece
• Still have local ILS (Millennium)
• The “back room” is still in the same place
• Still have other resources in place on our site
• Local federated search
• Didn’t add links aside from main search
Response from users somewhat underwhelming
• Usage statistics very low
• In last year, only 14,498 unique visitors
• Compared to over a million searches on our site
• ILL statistics show increase but not tremendous
• Odd statistics to prove success of discovery
• Shouldn’t successful discovery mean more local use?
Statistics might reflect inherent problems
• Traditional content (OPAC) primary focus
• Means that users are primarily discovering MARC records
• Is this what discovery should be?
• Inherent tension between tradition and future
• Google Scholar is cool because it was different
• Search across all content without so many limits
WCL is a mashup of past and future• OPACs usually good for known-item
searching
• If you know what you want, there’s probably an index
• Google is good for “unknown items”
• Type something in and all sorts of things are found
• WCL doesn’t do either thing all that well right now
Is WorldCat Local web scale discovery?
• Web scale means 2 things (Google Scholar)
• Everything in one index (no federated search)
• No authentication for search
• By this standard, not web scale
