Part of the National Library's purpose may best be summed up in three words: Collect, Preserve, Access. Seems fairly straightforward - any items the Library collects, we have to preserve them and provide access to them. The problem occurs when you consider access, and how many collections (and items in those collections) we have here. Published, unpublished, digital, physical, different media types, on-site, off-site, collaborative…if you drew a diagram, you could title it 'Everything, and Then Some'.
We've been fairly heads-down for the past few months with work on the latest National Library discovery service, and it's now available to the public, in beta form:
http://find.natlib.govt.nz/
Why?
There are a lot of drivers for this – one of which is some of our discovery tools are on older technologies that provide results at sub-optimal speeds. The planned move from the Wellington building is another one, where simpler access to Library and collaborative resources online will make things easier for our customers.
I think the biggest driver comes in the form of a lack of a unified way to find things at the National Library. Yes, we have several other sites that can provide our customers information, but it is a bit of a divided approach, and it certainly caused me confusion when I arrived. Where is the ideal place to search for the information I want? How do I get there? How are these sources of information connected? What is their context?
The idea of having a cross-collection discovery tool has been in the planning for some time, but it's just been recently that we've had the technology to accomplish it. A lot of thinking went on in those early days as to how best we could do this, and the team used that work as a basis for what's called the 'Discover, Deliver, Interact' programme, mainly because that's its name.
The 'Find'* site is really the first piece of the foundation in the DDI programme. We knew that without some sort of overarching discovery technology, there would be nothing to build on, and we would wind up with the same issues. It makes logical sense, really – if you can't find things, how can you expect to do anything with them?
How?
The underlying software - Ex Libris' Primo - provides us with a few other things we were after as well. The ability for customers to tag and comment on items, thus providing conversation (one-to-one, many-to-many) rather than just broadcasting (one-to-many) is something we're looking forward to leveraging in the future.
We also get the benefit of an application programming interface (API) from the software. This allows us to have flexibility in how we can create and support new digital services. It also means we will be able to extend and adapt the finding of our collections into other places, beyond just a web site. I'm thinking of things like mobile applications, Firefox plug-ins, or Google Gadgets, but there are heaps more things we're now able to do. After we figure out some details around how to implement it, we want to release the API from behind our walls, so that those of you so inclined may use them, perhaps even linking them up with the Digital New Zealand API.
What?
There's quite a bit of our information in Find now, and the plan is to keep adding to it. For now, we've got:
- National Library of New Zealand catalogue
- TAPHUI
- Timeframes
- Publications New Zealand
- Index New Zealand
- Te Puna Web Directory
- Matapihi
- findNZArticles
What Next?
That's the real high-level view of things. As mentioned, this is a beta release. We're aware of several issues that we're working to resolve right now, and I'm know we'll encounter more as we move forward. But, to quote someone in a very different line of work, this is the business we've chosen. I encourage you to give it a try, and let us know what you think. What works? What doesn't? What would you like to see, and where do you want it to go? This is the first step in a continuing journey, and you're invited along. You can use the feedback form on http://find.natlib.govt.nz/, use the comments here, or email find-feedback@natlib.govt.nz.
* 'Find' is very deliberate usage – and name - here. There are those that feel people don't like searching, they like finding. I'm one of them. For instance, which do you prefer – searching for your lost car keys, or finding your lost car keys?
3 comments:
Congratulations Mike & the team behind this. I think it shows a lot of promise & potential. I haven't given it a serious workout yet but will do so & let you know what I think.
One initial little comment - I saw the email list announcement, went to check it out & couldn't find a good blurb about the initiative. Can you put an 'About' link upfront that goes to this post (ie. "Find, Out")
Cheers
Philip
Some further feedback from me:
1. I found the integration of resources really worked for my subject area of domestic violence. I discovered online cartoons which are relevant and useful and which I would not otherwise have found (eg Moreu from TAPUHI). …now the next step to explore is how I could integrate them with the resources on the website I manage….
2. The link to cartoons listed from NZETC wasn’t so good as the records don’t have either thumbnails or descriptions & the NZETC was temporarily down
3. Push to RefWorks worked for me, which is fantastic. However I found I couldn’t push abstracts through on some of the records, eg INNZ. Abstracts worked with a TAPUHI cartoon record though
4. ‘Check availability’ is very easy to use and an excellent concept. However I found the wording initially misleading: “just click 'GO' button to get to full-text” when full-text is not online. Using ‘Show only: Online’ works better
5. I love the concept of User Tags applied to such a comprehensive view of NZ resources
6. Subject refinement is great to have, even given the resources can use different thesaurii
7. A date limit more recent than ‘after 2007’ would be handy
8. ‘Type’ limit options seem to work well & as I would expect
9. INNZ record to Refworks – no abstract & author mapped to ‘Authors, Secondary’ field in RefWorks instead of ‘Authors’ for some reason
10. Search history would be a useful addition
Hi Philip,
Thanks for the feedback. I'm very happy you were able to use Find to reveal relevant collection items that you might not have otherwise found - that's one of the things I really love to hear.
With the NZETC records (as with other Matapihi records) we don't actually hold an item's thumbnail, but link to it. That means if a partner's web site is down, the thumbnail and link won't work, as you discovered. I just tried it, though, and it looks like NZETC is back on line.
Wording was/is a particularly thorny issue with Find. It's difficult to strike the balance with what language works for all of our customers. In some cases, we made a best guess, and I'm sure we will revisit this frequently.
Dates too proved an interesting challenge. For instance, since we are searching across such varied metadata, how do we properly distinguish between a book published in 1925, and a manuscript written between 1920-1930 (or, better yet, dated 192?). We definitely need to refine how this works.
The RefWorks integration is an interesting one. We'll have to do some more investigation here.
Finally, there is a search history, though it is a little hidden. If you go to 'Guest e-Shelf' (or just 'e-Shelf' if you've signed in) there's a link on the left called 'This session's searches' which provides a history.
Hope this helps clarify some things. Thanks again for your comments.
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