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From metasearch to metaservices
David WalkerCalifornia State University
Introduction
Part philosophy What are we trying to do w/ metasearch? Where are the problems? How might we do it better?
Part practical Waxing philosophical is not enough! What can we do now with the tech we
have?
Rethinking metasearch?
We’ve been at it long enough now Google Scholar Newer systems
Next-generation catalogs? Enterprise search? Discovery layers?
New metasearch models
Metalib X-Server Design your own interface Incorporate other systems and data Experiment!
Xerxes Project Developed by CSU and John Hopkins Implemented at 20+ universities
X-Server
Metalib
Xerxes
KB
DBPHP / XSLT / MySQL
What are we trying to accomplish?
“We offer a fragmented set of systems to search for published information . . . each with very different tools for identifying and obtaining materials. For the user, these distinctions are arbitrary.” – UC Bib Serv Taskforce
Overview of the literature
1990-1999“Is There a Chance for a Standardized User
Interface?” –Fletcher
2000-2004 “Trumping Google? . . .” –Luther “Talking about a Revolution? . . . ” –Nicholas “The Answer to all of our Problems? . . .” –
Groenewegen “The Right Solution . . .” –Tennant
Overview of the literature
2004-2008 “Is Metasearching Dead?” –Tennant “Metasearching: Not as Good as We'd Like
It” –NLAQ “Why Librarians Hate Metasearch” –McHale “Plotting a New Course for Metasearch” –
Breeding
Arguing about metasearch
“[C]ross-database search tools . . . are the correct solution for unifying access to a variety of information resources.” –Roy Tennant
“Metasearching, then, is a step backward, a way of avoiding the learning process.” – William Frost
“[M]etasearch … cannot stand up to search systems based on centralized indexes” –Marshall Breeding
“Part of me keeps hoping [metasearch] will go away, but nope, it's still there.” – Andrew Pace
Arguing about metasearch
Broadcast argument (pro)“You can search multiple databases simultaneously!”
Nativist argument (anti)“The search is not advanced enough!”
Immature technology argument (anti)“The search is too slow!”“Google Scholar is faster!”
Isn’t it ironic?
Some librarians dislike metasearch because it is too
much like Google; others because it is not enough like
Google.
Usage statistics
SFX as a proxy measure? Query # 2: Requests by source (SID) Not all databases or clicks Apples-to-apples comparison
Example Cal State campuses Cal State Fullerton – general – 38,000
students Cal Poly – science + engineering – 20,000
students Sonoma State – liberal arts – 8,500 students
Usage statistics
Fullerton Native: 297,602 (54%) Xerxes: 252,238 (45%) Google: 5,340 (1%)
Cal Poly Native: 95,885 (47%) Xerxes: 92,534 (46%) Google: 13,697 (7%)
Sonoma Native: 22,654
(48%) Xerxes: 22,275
(48%) Google: 1,944
(4%)Native: 416,141 52%
Xerxes: 367,047 46%
Google: 20,98 3%
Isn’t it ironic?
Usage of Google Scholar may
depend in large part on whether
librarians promote it or not!
Usability studies
UniversitiesBoston College –BYU – Carnegie Mellon – Maryland – Mississippi – Northwestern – Oregon State – Rochester – Texas A & M –Colorado, Denver –California, Santa Cruz
SystemsMetalib – Encompass – Serials Solutions – Webfeat – LibraryFind
Usability studies
70% of the students in BYU study preferred metasearch over native interfaces
“[B]oth [metasearch and searching native interfaces individually] produce citation sets of similar quality” – BYU
“Graduate students and faculty . . . all located citations they had not previously found”
–Texas A&M
On search times
“Eight [out of 18] students measured the speed of the search processing as reasonable and only five found the system too slow.” –Maryland
“Users are willing to wait as long as they think that they will get useful results. Their perceptions of time depend on this belief.” –Santa Cruz
“When people accomplish what they set out to do on a site, they perceive that site to be fast . . . If people can't find what they want on a site, they will regard the site as a waste of time (and slow).” – Perfetti, Landesman
On the interface
“I found that both were not very user friendly.” – BYU Student
“[Non-federated search] lent itself to more abstracts . . . With [federated search] I was relying more on the title which can sometimes be misleading.” –BYU Student
“I would have to search through every single one of these to find which one is a scholarly article and which one is just a newspaper article.” – Maryland Student
Broadening our goals
“[T]he point of federated searching is to make searching as simple as possible” –Cervone
Is it all about search? What happens before you search? What happens after you search? Re-search is more than just
searching
Selecting the right resources
“Nothing slows the user's scanning momentum more than encountering results that are irrelevant . . . many users view it as a digital equivalent of Tourette's Syndrome, where the system just spits out random items, unrelated to their search.”
– Jared Spool
Selecting the right resources Why not search everything?
Impractical technically Impractical presentationally
What you don’t search is equally as important as what you do search
Why metasearch systems get this wrong (Overly-) focused on the search box Defining is not the same as limiting
Once you start down the Quick Search path, forever will it
dominate your destiny.
Desperately seeking search box
“I just want a search box on the homepage.”
– Your users
First Rule of Usability? Don't Listen to Users!
What users say they do is sometimes different from what they actually do
“The Google phenomenon”?
Desperately seeking search box
“[T]here is something inherent in the site's design that causes users to choose the search engine or the links, not a hard-and-fast preference of the user”
“[U]sers often gravitated to the search engine when the links on the page didn't satisfy them in some way.”
– Jared Spool
Isn’t it ironic?
The search box dominates the
opening screens, then disappears!
Changing queries
“Nearly all students repeated their searches, changing terms or subject categories, so the interface needs to make this easy.”– Maryland
“Each new piece of information [users] encounter gives them new ideas and directions to follow and, consequently, a new conception of the query … [T]he query itself (as well as the search terms used) is continually shifting, in part or whole.” –Bates
Services for results
Spell check Peer reviewed flag Full-text look-up Full-text linking Format Foreign language
Avoid pogosticking
“66% of purchases on [e-commerce] sites happened without any pogosticking . . . the more [users] pogosticked, the less likely the session would result in a purchase.”
“The best search results pages will prevent pogosticking by providing the relevant content before the user chooses a specific result.”
– Jared Spool
Services with results
Save and export Citation formatting Tagging, editing, and sharing Expert research help
Going back to search
Problems with broadcast searching Slow, dropped connections Lowest-common denominator searching
Problems with central indexing Not easy Requires software, hardware, money,
haggling
A middle ground?
Metasearch
Not all targets are created equal
Not all targets are created equal
Metasearch
Problems searching the catalog
Z39.50 searching not great Limited search options Browse searching not inherent in Metalib
Innovative ILS Hit counts are wrong Keyword results return results in bib id
order Not getting fixed any time soon.
WorldCat and Ebsco APIs
WorldCat API Free (to OCLC members) web service to
WorldCat Just ended pilot phase
Ebsco Integration Toolkit Free (to Ebsco customers) web service to
all Ebsco databases Available now
A-9 style Search Results Page
Catalog(s)
Acad Search
Metalib
A-9 style Psychology Search Results Page
Catalog(s)
PsycInfo Metalib
HybridSystem
Metasearch
Catalog
Main database
Other databases
From the catalog out?
Endecca VUFind Primo Encore WorldCat Local
Todd Miller, Webfeat
Library portal?
Metalib not flexible enough Interface Adding functionality Integrating with other systems
Xerxes should be Everything is XML-based Open source
Toward a services layer
Adding value beyond the native interface
Consolidation before distribution Come to the RSS presentation on Friday Saving, tagging, sharing
The interface is the system Metasearch, centrally indexed,
hybrid . . . Still need a good interface
Conclusion
“You can search multiple databases at the same time” is not a compelling enough argument
We need to focus on the whole research process , not just search
Add value and layer functionality on top of the results
Conclusion
We need an experimental platform to try new things, and an open source community to allow that to happen
xerxes.calstate.edu