Web-Scale Discovery…the good, the bad, and the ugly

While reading Pete Coco’s guest blog post, “Convenience and its Discontents: Teaching Web-Scale Discovery in the Context of Google,” I found myself shaking my head in agreement. I am not currently a librarian (although, I was just hired as an academic librarian – Yeah!), but I am an adjunct professor teaching Freshman English and writing. As a professor working with freshman, I wholeheartedly agree with his analysis and conclusions. Just because a generation has grown up with Google, doesn’t mean that translates into full knowledge and use of a library’s Discovery system because it “looks” like Google.

Coco states, “Rather than giving in to the temptation to compare discovery to Google as a means of marketing it to students, we should go out of our way to contrast the two.” I completely agree. Students need to understand and learn the differences in order to utilize discovery fully. They are able to see the similarities but the similarities are only ‘skin deep’. If students do not learn to go deeper, to understand the differences, the discovery tool will fail them and they it. Students must learn that “Discovery is not the tool for every task. Controlled vocabularies don’t federate well, and the student asking very specific questions of the literature is better off going straight to the disciplinary index.” These are learned things.

Coco concludes, “We must be careful with the way we describe the scale of discovery to students. In our attempts to market discovery as convenient and easy, we may in fact be selling them on a product that doesn’t exist. In the absence of a clear purpose, convenience is not convenient.” This is the gist of it! Discovery does not do away with instruction or pedagogy – it necessitates it. What a great article to read when I am on the verge of stepping into academic librarianship where I will play a part in student instruction.

Full Library Discovery…a Happy Medium

How far should we go with ‘full library discovery’? paints a picture of ‘full library discovery’ as it is currently (at least as of 2008 when the post was published). The author suggests that for the discovery to truly be “full” there also needs to be ways to personalize a page, making the discovery unique to each user – meeting and going above and beyond the user’s specific needs. I agree for the most part…at the end of the blog post the author states, “But, then there’s serendipity, there’s finding the different things that you haven’t looked for before, or read before, because they are new or different.  One of the issues with recommendations is the tendency for them to be circular, ‘What gets recommended gets read’ to corrupt the performance indicator mantra. So how far do you go?” This, for me, is the issue.

I am a Netflix user. I really enjoy the low-cost and variety; however, I have been more than disappointed with the “discovery” system in place based on recommendations from what I have viewed. Why? Because I desire to “discover” other items in other genres as well. This is true for Amazon. Honestly, while I appreciate the recommendations there are truly circular. More than anything I enjoy the moment of serendipity in the library when I stumble upon a book or an author that I would have never found any other way. One recent serendipitous moment was when I discovered the author Jincy Willet. She is an author I probably wouldn’t have discovered through a “full library discovery” of recommendations.

The comments to the blog post also pointed out another great aspect – the ability to monitor and control the personalizations. I think this ability is key to users of today and in a world where so much of what is done lacks a lot of privacy and control. Users want the benefits and the privacy in one package so this is definitely something that needs to be kept in mind as “full library discovery” services continue.

Ode To Interoperability

Systems all working together with ease

Organization sharing, simple and free

Allowing for deftness of user discovery

taking MARC to ONIX or MODS to MARC

This is Crosswalk, OCLC software to spark

ingenuity and consistency alike

Translating codes from one to another

with Crosswalk in place is not a long hike

Okay, well that is all I have – any additions are welcome:-)

I enjoyed reading “Toward element-level interoperability in bibliographic metadata” by Carol Jean Godby, Devon Smith and Eric Childress. One aspect I love about the library world (and education) is, because it is a service profession, information is not kept hidden or secret but shared. Crosswalk as discussed in the article as a function of OCLC was created for exactly that purpose – sharing. Metadata needs vary among organizations and institutions – so they create and use differing metadata schemas – how can these be exchanged? This was the problem faced and solved. Obviously, there is still more work to do and change to consider as the cataloging world is seeing a lot of upheaval, but it is a great start and very useful tool. So here’s to interoperability!

Promote, promote, promote!

Lorcan Dempsey’s article, “Libraries and the informational future: Some notes,” he states, “In summary, the library has to actively position itself to be in the flow of research, learning and civic engagement.” This is absolutely true! I cannot understand what purpose it would serve a library to not position itself as such…isn’t the point of the library to engage with its users? I think that this is only the first step though, being the prepared as “the flow” needs to be followed with promotion of yourself as “the flow.” Dempsey’s strategic perspective is spot on and any library would do well to take notice. Dempsey is correct when he states, “Above all it is important to understand that ends need to structure means, because, as the poet said, it must change. The library, after all, is a growing organism.” The library must either continue to evolve…ahead of the game…or find itself obsolete. It cannot remain static in a very dynamic environment. However, the strategic perspective must include promotion.

The idea of promotion may be a bit foreign in some library circles. Historically, the library has not needed to “promote” itself to any great extent because it was obviously the place to get information. In today’s world information is not so “contained” or at least not perceived to be. Younger people who are not shown the value of the library and information organization will increasingly turn to peers (think tags) and Google (think limited and one-dimensional) to acquire their information. This is destructive! The vast amount of information out there is not available free-floating and easily found with a simple search – it is found within the library whether that be physical items, archival items, digitized items or databases. These are available through the library system and are subject controlled and have depth thanks for information professionals. People need to know just how vibrant and necessary the library is!

I know recently in my county, the library system hired a marketing executive to work full-time in library promotion. I applaud that! Curious to know how others in the field are promoting? Any thoughts?

It’s not so muc…

It’s not so much information that we need as knowledge. And knowledge means people. – John Hagel as quoted in L. Dempsey’s, “Libraries and the informational future: Some notes”