Computing Service User Forum

Today (3^rd November) I attended the first meeting of CompuForum (Computing Service User Forum). The Forum has been set up to provide a channel of non-technical communication between Computing Services and other departments. At this first meeting there was approximately 26 attendees from various departments and campuses. Chris Smith (Computing Liaison Manager) is managing the Forum and started the meeting with an overview of the Computing Services staff hierarchy and where the Forum fits into that structure. Chris then went on to talk about the aims of the Forum and an overview of some of the upcoming computing projects that will have an impact on departments:

Aims:
Chris outlined the two main aims of the Forum as:

• providing a platform for departments to raise issues or feedback information to Computing service regarding the IT services within their departments.
  
• providing an opportunity for Computing Services to inform and engage departments concerning upcoming IT projects.
  

Within these aims, Chris also stated that Forum members (both from computing Services and other departments) had a responsibility to act as a communication channel between the Forum and their colleagues. This means that Forum members have an obligation to report back to colleagues on discussions within the meetings and to also raise issues at Forum meetings as a direct result of discussion with colleagues. Thus, we really need to start thinking (as a department) what are the main IT issues in the Library and how we can translate these issues into questions that can be raised at the next Forum meeting.

Projects:

Chris stated that Computing Services have put a lot of effort into designing websites for students as part of the 'student first' agenda, but haven't put the same effort into staff websites. To this end there will soon be a new website aimed at meeting the needs of staff.

The next project discussed was how staff are charged for printing to student MFD printers, but are not charged for printing to staff MFD printers. This is common knowledge to us in the library, but new to other departments. However, there are some other details about the new printing system that may be of interest. If you print to a student printer your print credits will be reduced as appropriate from the original £25...this we know. Then, this £25 will be replenished every term.. If you exceed £25 in printing to a student printer in a term, then you will need to contact the departmental director (Pete in our case, obviously) and he will then need to contact the i-zone with a request to have more credits added to your account. There is another option...you can purchase print credits yourself and top up your own account (although I'm not sure if this will be something you will want to do). I think the main point behind the discussion with printing is that it would be preferable for staff to print to staff printers, but if you have to print to student printers, then do it in very low volume. Incidentally there is a website dedicated to printing that explains all this information in detail and where you can check your current printer credits: http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/printing

The third project discussed was the introduction of complex passwords in early 2010. As part of an internal audit it was stated that our password policy for computing accounts was too basic. At some point in February 2010 we will be required to change our password to something more complex. Information and documentation for this will be disseminated to all staff and students in the new year.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) was the next topic. SLAs are being introduced on the call management system used by the i-zone. When a call is logged on the system it will be assessed as to how long this call should take to complete. This is the service level agreement between the user who reported the issue and the department, team, or individual who is responsible for answering that support call. If the time taken to complete the support call is longer than the SLA then the call will be escalated to a higher level and the department, team, or individual will have to justify why they have broken the SLA. This isn't just something that will affect Computing Services, but will be introduced to every department that uses the call management system.

The final project discussed was upgrading computers on campus to Windows 7. At present there has been no decision made on when or if staff PCs will be upgraded to windows 7. There was, however, indication that student PCs will be upgraded sometime around September 2010. At this time I have no idea what impact this upgrade will have on the PCs or the i-borrow laptops in AH.


Other Issues
The final part of the meeting was given up to discussion. There were two main issues that came from the general discussion around the table:


Out of hours support:
It was raised by a member of the finance team and echoed by many around the table that there needs to be some kind of computing support provision in the evenings. At present the computing support provision is available from 9am – 5pm. Chris stated that there is an ongoing discussion within Computing services and other departments as to: if and how an extended computing provision could be implemented. This is of course very relevant in AH where we are open very late into the night and there is the possibility of 24 hour opening in the future.

The loaning of AV equipment:
A member of the media department raised a concern that they were being approached for AV equipment because the existing AV provision has been partly moved to AH. I stated that there were some members of the library (me included) that felt that the library was probably not the best place for the loaning of AV equipment. There was discussion around the table from members of other campuses as well as this campus about how disparate the AV loaning service was and perhaps there needs to be a more structured approach to AV loans.

Last thought
I'm not sure what is the best way (as a department) that we can discuss issues we would like raised at the CompuForum...so if you have any suggestions, they would be very welcome. However, in the meantime, if you have any questions about CompuForum or you would like to raise an issue then email me and I'll find a way to generate discussion with everyone.

ebooks, catalogues, and discovery tools

I started a discussion on twitter a few days back regarding e-books. The discussion was prompted by a question I answered on the Library Web2.0 mailing list (lis-web2@jiscmail.ac.uk) from Helen Leech (Virtual Content Manager - Surrey Library Service). Helen's question was regarding e-books from the Gutenburg Project and how best to import them into her catalogue. Here is an overview of the Gutenburg Project:

The Gutenburg Project is a web site where you can download over 30,000 free e-books as well as over 100,000 free e-books through partner and affiliation schemes.

Helen's question started me thinking about where is the best place to 'catalogue' e-books within the library. In terms of choice it really seems to boil down to two options:

1. Catalogue e-books within the LMS
2. Index e-books within a discovery tool

I'm using the term index for the discovery tool as opposed to catalogue, because it is more appropriate. However, the two operations can be thought of as similar in their nature...i.e: they both involve the recording of resource information within the particular system. Here is a short overview of how discovery tools work:

Discovery tools can be thought of as next generation OPACs, but can search far more than just holdings in the LMS. There are in essence web sites that are dedicated to indexing, searching, and displaying information about resources. This information is compiled and fed into the discovery tool prior to any searching taking place in a method called 'harvesting'. The information can be derived from many places including the holdings in the LMS, e-journals in SFX, institutional repositories, and a host of other resources both internal or on the web. This method of pre-loading the discovery tool with indexes of resource information makes the search process very fast and very flexible.
Primo is ExLibris' implementation of a discovery tool, but there are many alternatives out there (see my previous blog post here)

You can also see a few of these tools in action here:
Aquabrowser at Edinburgh University
Primo at University of East Anglia
VuFind at the LSE

So, we could catalogue the e-books in the LMS, or we could catalogue the e-books in the LMS and then export this information into the discovery tool, or we could just put the information straight into the discovery tool and bypass the LMS. So, where is the best place to catalogue e-books?...in the LMS or in the discovery tool? I posted a question along these lines on twitter and a discussion ensued with those in favour of the LMS and those in favour of the discovery tool. Two blog posts were identified during the conversation and are very relevant

Is an e-book a book? by Lukas Koster (Head of Library Systems Dept. Library Univ. of Amsterdam)
Library catalogues, search systems and data by Chris Keene (University of Sussex Library - developing information related web technologies)

Also Frank Vandepitte (Ghent University Library) emailed me with his views on the matter and a breakdown of where they catalogue their resources at Ghent Uni:

Ebook situation here in Ghent :

licensed stuff, stored in sfx (15.000)
licensed stuff, stored in aleph (136.000 ecco books)
licensed stuff, stored as static file (100.000 eebo books)
free stuff, stored as static file (30.000 gutenberg)
free stuff, stored as static file (2.500 dbnl books)
scanned stuff, stored in separate aleph database (40.000 ugent books sent to google)
scanned stuff, stored as static file (ca. 500.000 books from hathi)

My personal experience

• in the case of the ecco & eebo books where we've bought the metadata, there's no advantage really in uploading this in aleph, since there’s no need to catalog, the metadata stay virtually unchanged (and so they should, you don't want your catalogers fiddling with these data)

• in the case of licensed books metadata which we get on a regular basis from ex libris (sfx), there's a strong case not to integrate those in your ILS, in doing so you avoid the hassle of uploading, deduping, matching with print "manifestations" of the same title, etc. Keeping your ILS in sync with SFX is not easy, as I've discovered when we're still exporting e-journal data from SFX to Aleph and trying to match them with the printed ones.

• the only case where I've found the ILS to be useful was to deal with digitized versions of print books. If you scan a book from your collection, it's logical to store the url in your ILS. As partners of Google Books we also have to catalogue some 50.000 extra books per year on top of the normal work volume. If we wouldn't be using the ILS cataloguing module we'd be in big trouble I fear...

ergo, in most cases just use your discovery tool to index the metadata directly bypassing your traditional catalogue and save yourselve a lot of trouble
I did upload a first batch of ecco data in aleph but wouldn’t repeat it
btw, the endusers just don’t care where it comes from as long as they find it and access it

Frank's breakdown is really interesting because it shows what works best in a real world example. It seems like at Ghent they favour the discovery tool as the primary way to catalogue e-books. However, it is important to stress that the Ghent example is what works best for Ghent and may not be the best example for every institution. Thus, I think it would be wrong to try and answer the question of "where is the best place to catalogue e-books?". Instead we should be asking:

"where is the best place to catalogue e-books at Canterbury Christ Church?"

This is obviously a huge question that need to be investigated and discussed, but Lukas did present me with a possible way to look at this question from a different angle. Rather than try to understand where is the best place to catalogue, perhaps it would be better to think about what is our primary interface for our users (or what will it be). At present we have two primary interfaces:

1. The web OPAC for printed material
2. MetaLib (coupled with SFX) for e-resources

If we decide that we are never going to move away from this model then it leaves us little option, but to put e-books in the catalogue. However, we have rarely explored putting electronic resources on the OPAC and this would take a lot of investigation to find the best approach. For e-books that have a printed counterpart we could use the 856 field, but I would imagine that there will be vast numbers of e-books where we do not have a printed version. So we would have to think about importing MARC records into the catalogue for e-books and managing e-book packages in a similar way to how we deal with e-journal packages in SFX.

The alternative is to develop a different approach to our primary interfaces, which would include a discovery tool:

1. Discovery tool to search for everything that we can obtain an index for
2. MetaLib for e-resources where no index is available (most databases at present)

The advantage of this system is that we would be a huge step closer to the 'one interface for search' that has been a goal of libraries for so long. All of our printed material, all of our e-journals, and any e-books we acquired would be searchable in one interface (databases would still need to be searched by MetaLib). Also it appears to be easier to index resources in a discovery tool than it is to catalogue them within a LMS. However, adding a new system such as a discovery tool would need a lot of work and would have a price tag attached, even if we went down the 'open source' route.

I think what this shows is that even a simple question such as: "where is the best place to catalogue e-books?", demands a lot of thought, discussion, and investigation in a whole host of areas. Especially considering that this discussion only focused on cataloguing and searching, without even considering licensing or purchasing models. It also highlights how important an 'e-library' strategy is in terms of ensuring that decisions made now are thought about in terms of current and emerging technologies and that disparate projects are steered toward a common goal.

Xerxes

In a previous blog post (here) I talked about Xerxes; a replacement for the MetaLib interface. MetaLib has always been plagued by its poor interface design, its overly complex searching structure, and for being far from intuitive. The Xerxes project (developed at the California State University) was set-up to remedy some if these issues.

Homepage for the project: http://xerxes.calstate.edu/
Codepage for the project: http://code.google.com/p/xerxes-portal/

One of the disadvantages of investigating Xerxes has been that every implementation I have looked at requires a login to gain access. This means that you can view the initial page, but cannot perform searches or see how intuitive the application is. However, Jonathan Rochkind (John Hopkins University, Baltimore) was kind enough to show me how to gain Guest access to his Xerxes implementation. Not only this, but he said that it was fine to share the link with whoever I wanted (hence this blog post). Jonathan has also sent me a Guest link to his normal MetaLib installation, which is really useful for comparing the Xerxes interface with the existing MetaLib interface. This also shows how Xerxes can be run in parallel to the existing MetaLib interface without any disruption to service.

Xerxes: http://jhsearch.library.jhu.edu/?base=authenticate&action=login&authentication_source=guest

MetaLib: http://metalib.mse.jhu.edu/

I have been reliably informed by Graham Seaman (Royal Holloway University London) that the installation is very easy and straight forward. He indicated that the only stumbling blocks were integrating the Athens/Shibboleth login (which we have already done) and issues with sets (which we don't use).

It may well be worth looking at Xerxes as a possible alternative to the MetaLib interface if the interface design and website structure answer the issues raised as part of the MetaLib UI review. It certainly sounds like it might be easier to implement Xerxes than it would be trying to make the existing MetaLib interface do something it was never designed to do.

Have a play with the Xerxes system at John Hopkins and feedback with your thoughts.

Open University & iTunes

In June 2008 the Open University went live with their iTunes store. The idea was to follow the likes of Yale and MIT in providing course content (audio and video) for free via a download in the popular iTunes application:

http://www3.open.ac.uk/media/fullstory.aspx?id=13805

The service has been live for 16 months and in that time has had over 10 million downloads by over a million visitors. The project has been a huge success and there seems to be little sign of interest waning :

http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/itunesu/impact/

However, there has always been an issue...you need to download and install the iTunes application in order to access the content. This isn't always feasible or practical and is a potential barrier to pointing students towards these resources...that is up until now. Recently a new beta service has been launched by the KIMI project that allows these OU podcasts to be accessed via a browser without the need to download or install iTunes:

http://podcast.open.ac.uk/

There are some really interesting podcasts there and because the OU structures its content in an 'academic' fashion it is really easy for students to link through to relevant info.

A mashed reading list

Last week ExLibirs unveiled a competition to encourage developers to extend the use of the ExLibris products by writing code extensions.

ELympics—the Ex Libris Open-Platform Competition

This reminded me that I had written a 'proof of concept' application a little while back to see if I could 'mashup' RefWorks with ALEPH, SFX, and Google Books to produce a dynamic reading list. The resulting application uses a RefWorks feature called RefWorks Lists. This allows a user to share a folder within their RefWorks account for viewing by anyone. The clever part of this sharing process is allowing the list to be shared as an RSS feed. My application formats this feed, adds Google Book covers (if available) and then generates is series of button depending on the type of item listed. These buttons are the SFX button, a button to the item in RefWorks, and optionally a button to the catalog, and a button to the resource.

Here is a shared list I created in my RefWorks account:

Shared List

and here is the same list generated using my reading list mash-up

Mashed List

Although this is lacking in design (it is only a proof of concept) it does show the power of how mashups can take information from disparate sources to redefine it as an enhanced service.

If for any reason some or all of the system isn't working then let me know and I'll try and get it working again (it's running on a server that sits in my living room at home)

Interactive map

A few people last week were asking about the Interactive map and how it works.

The concept behind the map is very easy; basically I position a map within the browser and then position a circle on top of it at given coordinates. Each floor of the map is an image that is 760 pixels wide x 600 pixels high. Armed with this knowledge it is easy to place the red circle in exactly the right place on the (give or take some fine tuning).

Here are some links that open the map with the circle at position 200x200, and 400x400:

http://libcat-dev-nhr-01.canterbury.ac.uk:8993/map/map.html?top=200&left=200&floor=ground

http://libcat-dev-nhr-01.canterbury.ac.uk:8993/map/map.html?top=400&left=400&floor=ground

You can see from the URLs that it is easy to place the circle wherever you want just by changing the values of the top and left variables. By combining some extra features, such as a title and a smaller circle, we can start to use the map for any purpose. For example if you wanted to show a student where consultation room AH1.23 is on the second floor we would only need to change the top, left, and floor variables in the URL, give it a title and tell it we want to use the small circle as a marker:

http://libcat-dev-nhr-01.canterbury.ac.uk:8993/map/map.html?top=375&left=375&floor=first&image=circleSmall&title=Meet%20me%20here%20at%20consultation%20room%20AH1.23

So now we have a map that can be used to show any position with Augustine House, we can use it for added functionality within other applications such as the OPAC. As we all know locations of items within the OPAC are determined by classmark (and type of resources in some cases). So we need some way of translating a classmark to a location that the map understands, which is a floor level, and a top and left position. This is done in a different web page called classmark.html. This web page expects two variables: classmark and type of loan. Once it has this information it can try to translate it to a position on the map. For example these are two lines from the code that are translating short loan:

if (classmark <= 499) { mapLevel = 'ground'; topPos = 545; leftPos = 450; }

else if (classmark <= 999) { mapLevel = 'ground'; topPos = 515; leftPos = 405; }

This shows that any item that is short loan would have the ground floor map and have top and left coordinates set depending on the bays for short loan (below 499 and above 499). Here is an example of how the map might work within the OPAC. Use the 'opac map' link below to open up a predefined search. Once opened then click on the 'locate' link that is adjacent to the sublibrary within the sublibrary field.

opac map

By clicking the link next to the different loan types you can see how the location of the item is shown on the map. This is only a test application and there are still lots of issues to iron out, such as: Periodicals having no location information, how to handle CR material, and how to handle other material such as fiction, scores, etc.

Have a play with the map and see what you think....I'm sure there are lots of uses it could be put to.

'Value Added' Data

There area number of ways in which we could leverage the power of our data to provide 'value added' information to users within the OPAC. Some examples of services are:

• Recommended items (users that borrowed this book also borrowed these books...)
• Loan stats (this book has been borrowed # times in the past 12 months)
• Interesting items (here are other items that may be of interest...)
• Alternative items (this item is on loan, have you considered this item instead...)
  
• Search terms (users that used this search terms also used the search terms...)
• Tag clouds (a 'cloud' of frequently used search terms)
  

However, the biggest barrier to merging this information within existing interfaces is the time it takes to run the queries on the database. If extracting this information takes 30 seconds to a minute per search, users will soon become very frustrated with how slow the system is. A potential resolution was defined by Tim Spalding (creator of LibraryThing.com) in chapter 10 of the Library Mashups book by Nicole Engard.

Tim outlines a method of using a small database to hold information external to the LMS for use in other ways. In our environment this information could be accessed and extracted in a simple and fast query and then 'mashed' with OPAC information to enhance the user experience. The method involves extracting just the information that is needed in an automatic export every night. This information will be pre-formatted and 'cleaned-up' so it is ready to be delivered to the user along with their original search within the OPAC. Because the information is relevant, pre-formatted, and exists within a simple database, it can be accessed and delivered extremely quickly. The diagram below shows this process:



An excellent example of an OPAC with these 'value added' features can be found at the Huddersfield University Library. This following link takes you to the OPAC with examples of, recommendations, virtual shelf browsing, loan statistics, tag cloud, and a whole lot more:

An item on the Huddersfield Uni OPAC

Here is a screen shot (bottom half of the screen) of the same OPAC item with indicators showing the different 'value added' parts: