Coordinating Committees

Council of University of Wisconsin Libraries
Resource Discovery Exploratory Task Force (CUWL RDETF)

Progress Report
May 4, 2009

The CUWL RDETF met for the first time on January 28, 2009.  Since that time, we’ve been meeting for two hours on the first and third Wednesday of each month. Each member of the task force reviewed the UW-Madison RDETF report and then discussed this report during our February meetings. We decided to ask several campuses to repeat the focus group exercise that Madison’s RDETF conducted so that our vision and recommendations are aligned with student and faculty needs and expectations.  The results of these focus groups - both themes and patron comments - are included in this report. We developed a draft vision for information resource discovery as requested in our charge. We continue to monitor and discuss resource discovery options - including proprietary systems and those realizable through increasingly powerful, open-source indexing/retrieval, and database/web applications. Finally, thanks to the work of Madison’s Shared Development Group (SDG), we have access to a resource discovery laboratory in which we can develop and test systems using these new technologies with UW-System data and assess how they can help us meet our needs and the needs of our patrons.  

For a partial list of options we are considering, see:  http://cuwlwiki.wetpaint.com/page/Various+Resource+Discovery+Systems. 

Our recommendation at this point focuses on the issue of development. CUWL should begin to discuss how the UW System and campus libraries might support current and future development efforts related to resource discovery. 

This progress report includes the following sections:

Page 2: Task Force Charge
Task Force Key Expectations
Task Force Membership

Page 3: Vision for Information Resource Discovery in UW System Libraries

Page 4: Development of a Resource Discovery Laboratory by Madison’s Shared Development Group (SDG)

Page 5-11: Results of Focus Group Sessions at Select UW Campuses


Task Force Charge

The task force should begin their work by reviewing the final report authored by the UW-Madison Resource Discovery Exploratory Task Force. see: http://uwlibdiscovery.blogspot.com/. The task force should develop a vision for information resource discovery in the UW System Libraries. The task force should also provide an updated environmental scan of current options, including the opportunities and challenges of each. The task force should investigate and report on related initiatives of other libraries and library systems, in the state, region and nationally. Finally, the task force should recommend resource discovery solutions that are desirable and appropriate for UW System libraries.


Task Force Key Expectations

Building on the UW-Madison report, develop a vision for resource discovery in the UW-System Libraries, which includes:

  • Scope of the tool(s)/service(s) and their relationship to each other
  • Features and characteristics of the resource discovery tool(s)/service(s)
  • Priority of features and characteristics
  • Relationship of UW-System resource discovery tool(s)/service(s) to others resource discovery tool(s)/service(s), especially those in the UW System.

Environmental scan of current options or directions, including opportunities and challenges associated with each.

Recommend a resource discovery solution that is desirable and appropriate for UW System libraries.

Task Force Membership

  • Steve Frye (UW-Madison), sfrye@library.wisc.edu
  • Sue Dentinger (UW-Madison), sdentinger@library.wisc.edu
  • Mitch Lundquist (UW-Madison), mlundquist@library.wisc.edu
  • Bill Doering (UW-La Crosse), doering.will@uwlax.edu
  • Lisa Jewel (UWSA), ljewell@uwsa.edu
  • Barb Bren (UW-Whitewater), brenb@uww.edu
  • Valerie Malzacher (CUWL Liaison, UW-River Falls), valerie.i.malzacher@uwrf.edu
  • Eric Jennings (UW-Eau Claire), jenninge@uwec.edu


Draft Resource Discovery Vision

Note: The following bullets are not in a prioritized order.

Our resource discovery product(s) will…

  • Link to full text documents and snippet views (e.g. Google Books).
  • Allow natural language searching.
  • Be simple and intuitive in design and search functionality.
  • Allow patrons to find an array of resources and formats, including analog and digital items that we own or license through a single or reduced number of integrated search interface(s).
  • Allow patrons to quickly drill down within the results of a search.
  • Include 'did you mean' functionality.
  • Offer recommended resources based on a patrons search.
  • Distinguish between peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources.
  • Distinguish between sources immediately available online and those that might take some time to access.
  • Distinguish between analog sources available immediately within campus libraries and those that would require time to access.
  • Provide access to online help that is integrated into the interface.
  • Allow results to be listed in relevancy ranked order.
  • Allow us to have control over the search interface and our data.
  • Integrate with citation management tools.
  • Work well with each other.
  • Allow for intuitive and efficient administration of resources.
  • Allow us to host or provide access to multiple types (formats) of data.

Development of a Resource Discovery Laboratory

In an effort to assess the potential and feasibility of locally developed resource discovery systems, the RDETF supports a number of efforts being pursued by the UW-Madison Libraries Shared Development Group (SDG).

The primary effort is being referred to as "The Resource Disco" and can be tracked at http://disco.library.wisc.edu

The Resource Disco (RDisco) is an experiment to identify challenges and opportunities for new library discovery interface projects that have recently matured within the academic and research library community. RDisco development is being pursued using the open source, SOLR/Lucene software for the indexing of bibliographic and other types of data. VuFind, Blacklight and a locally developed interface called "SaneCat" are being used for the discovery layer.

The SDG has installed each application and ingested 10 percent of UW-Madison's bibliographic data.  They're currently working on ingesting 10 percent from each UW System institution as well to create a union index to prototype system-wide searching. Display and holdings issues, user interface, circulation status and universal borrowing are all being assessed. Next steps will involve ingesting a representative digital collection to assess the integrated indexing and discovery of non-MARC data. The SDG plans to demonstrate these efforts at the summer CUWL meeting.

Other related SDG efforts involve the UW Digital Collections Center, the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology and the UW-Madison Zoological Museum. These efforts include the use of SOLR/Lucene indexing for objects hosted in a Fedora* repository along with development of a browsing, search and retrieval interface for these collections.

Ultimately the SDG is working towards a resource discovery service that will provide a comprehensive, aggregated discovery interface that gathers, organizes, and indexes information from a wide array of asset pools. Additionally, efforts will be made to integrate, when necessary, with federated search systems such as Metalib.

*Fedora Commons website at http://www.fedora-commons.org/

Results of Focus Group Sessions at Select UW Campuses

The following are the results of focus groups conducted at Eau Claire, Green Bay, Parkside, River Falls, and Whitewater.  The results from River Falls and Whitewater are summarized below.  The results from Eau Claire, Green Bay, and Parkside are a list of comments made by students and faculty (in their voice) following each of the five questions we asked. 

Summary of Themes from River Falls

a. Students agree that the library is a valuable resource. They feel more students need to know what it has to offer.
b. Library resources are not easy to find. Good things are buried on library web pages. Many students use the free web because of this.
c. The ideal research environment provides resources that are easy for students to use.
d. Students are frustrated when they try to navigate to a resource via FindIt, only to find that the full-text is not available.
e. It is hard to remember from semester to semester how to use library resources.
f. Students want more up-to-date books readily available.
g. Students have an ongoing need for access to computers and laptops.
h. Keyword searching doesn’t always work well for students.
i. Students feel that library research takes time. Trial and error is necessary to get to good results.
j. Students don’t always know about the good services (UB and ILL in particular) that the library offers.

Summary of Themes from Whitewater

a. Students are not always aware of the Library resources and services that are available to them. When they conduct research they are frustrated by the difficulties they encounter when they try to:

  • Determine where to search.
  • Translate a topic into an effective search.
  • Find relevant results. (Students find that titles may be deceptively relevant when the actual content is not and search results may contain many non-relevant items in addition to useful items.)
  • Cite sources. (One student liked using RefWorks to help with citations. RefWorks is not a resource available campus-wide at UWW, but the student was in a class where students had access.)
b. When asked about the best web services they’ve used and why they liked them, students repeatedly commented that the sites they named (Amazon.com, Google, etc.) made it easy to find what they needed.
c. When students were shown VuFind as a possible alternative to the current Voyager OPAC, they consistently liked it, preferred it to the Voyager OPAC, and thought its features would help them successfully find items on a research topic.
d. Students were asked if they used their cell phones for functions other than making calls (to explore interest in delivering library information to cell phones). Students in these focus groups used their cell phones for texting, but not Internet because of the extra cost.

1. Try to imagine, if you could create or have your ideal research environment (on campus), equipped with any resources, facilities, technology, or human resource necessary to do your research, what characteristics would it have?

Students (Question 1):
a. More table space next to the computers to spread my stuff out.
b. Private study rooms where you can practice presentations on your own b/c right now you have to have a group to check out a study room.
c. It’s too cold in the library.
d. Comfortable furniture and lighting.
e. More quiet areas.
f. We’ve got a good group of people here, we’re amazing.
g. I’ve never gone to the reference desk but [a librarian] has come to my class multiple times and been very helpful.
h. When looking for sources online there are too many clicks, you need to reduce the number of clicks that it takes to get to an article.  It should tell me right away if it is available or not.
i. Most students use the meta search (quick search, search spot are a couple names for it) rather than individual databases.
j. If I didn’t work in the library, I wouldn’t know about these resources
k. Simplify the library catalog!
l. I think it would be too overwhelming to have books and articles in one search interface.
m. I think it would be nice to have books and articles in one search interface.
n. Do more outreach to the different programs [majors] on campus.
o. Make limits in the catalog more apparent.
p. A tips page on how to search the catalog would be nice.
q. Computers (need for research), books (if class requires), campus selected databases that are more user friendly, 24 quiet study area.
r. In high school some students had accounts with folders with access to different resources
s. Able to use various web browsers.
t. Students expressed concern that they need to find information that is credible.
u. Have books, journals, electronic resources – library needs more visibility, students don’t know what the library offers.

Faculty (Question 1):
a. Want more significant things to float to the top (i.e. peer-evaluated); want to search by your own favorites or other people’s favorites (e.g. Amazon’s stars).
b. Want to be able to search everything. Why can’t we get access to everything that is available at any of the UW campuses?
c. Want to come back to something later. Now I email citations to myself and save them up for future use.
d. Want to search for books we don’t own.
e. Want to be able to browse the journal Nature (which we don’t have).  ILL is not sufficient because I don’t have a particular article in mind--I want the entire issue.
f. Want to have my search terms translated so I can find materials in other languages.
g. Want it opened up to Google because everyone starts with Google.  I should be able to find everything in our library with a Google search.
h. (Sciences professor) I want to be able to search for a molecule and only get primary literature.
i. My human needs are already well met by library staff.
j. Connect writing help with research help so that students can access tutoring in conjunction with research to emphasize both are part of the same process.
k. Information Literacy might be merged with tutoring assistance/services.
l. Would be great to find a way to put the library’s face/ make it more visible, better connection to physical library and people, (videos maybe).
m. Students need better orientation to physical library, for example a first year student was surprised that library didn’t have books (didn’t know there are many floors).
n. Some depts./students don’t use paper resources, relying on electronic subscriptions, (sciences, communications) requiring access to Madison and Milwaukee resources, current resources, professor purchases books she needed has purchased on own (obscure), prefers electronic reference sources.
o. Many texts are online now or have supplemental materials online, yet students have a hard time finding them.
p. Online texts hard to use in some class room setting. 
q. Advantage of having Madison so close- can drive to get there to use resources, but something things available electronically - can we share electronic licenses with Madison (handbook of cable communications) - lists all the broadcast stations & stats, would like to have access to that (faculty would really want this list).
r. Can library have survey of what’s at Madison electronically that [our campus] doesn’t have access to.
s. Rely on interlibrary loan greatly, has worked well for research needs.
t. Bibliography of Asian studies (needed for asia history) on a paid basis- would like library to pursue purchase.


2. Describe the best web-based service you‘ve ever experienced. What made it excellent? What distinguished it from the crowd?

Students (Question 2):
a. Wikipedia! Because it mentions other topics and makes the links easy to click through to another article.  It’s all on one site and refers you to other material.
b. Credo reference is nice that some libraries have that does a similar thing.
c. Have information in the book that describes it like Amazon – you don’t get that in the catalog right now.
d. Google and Amazon fill in your answer once you start typing it into the search box.  That’s really nice.
e. Did you mean function in Google is another thing that would be great to have so that if you misspell things, it pops up with more information on what it thinks you might have meant.
f. Google, use to look up school related & personal, mostly credible results.
g. Youtube.
h. Wikipedia pro (show what’s new, chat groups w/ professionals).
i. Yahoo.
j. Use wikipedia as a start, use the links.

Faculty (Question 2):
a. (Art faculty member) Photoeye.com – they sell photo books--every single one on the planet is for sale.  (she wants comprehensiveness).
b. Google.
c. FarfromMoscow (http://www.moscow.ucla.edu/) – is a music pop culture site from UCLA.  It has scholarly, audio and visual stories.  Things are well organized into categories.
d. Depositories--the most successful ones are narrow in scope.
e. Flickr, because the tags are user generated.  I can make more sense of them than the ones the library uses.
f. Amazon--“if you like this…”  Amazon somehow knows what I like just by what I search for on their site.  It’s kind of Big Brotherish, but it’s really effective.
g. Yes, that can be good if it’s done well, but I hate it when I send an e-card to someone and then another site asks me if I want to send flowers or a gift.  At that point it’s invasive and annoying.  It has to be done in a non-spamming sort of way.
h. JSTOR- access to journals.
i. Ebay - because efficiently effectively sorts items, technology to make work/security & safe guards work well – amazing.
j. Academic Search Premier - access to journals.
k. Amazon - intuitive - easy to use, looking for cutting edge & new - find it faster than library catalog.
l. Hulu.com - can find things easily, it knows her already, had done search for Detroit Lions baby wear, and later doing another search brought up ad for similar products - remembers her search/interests, likes that it tends her wants & needs & likes.
m. GPS tracker that has sale alerts.

3. Where have you found difficulties/frustrations in the research process?

Students (Question 3):
a. Looking at journals in search spot because there are only a couple of ways to narrow it down.
b. You get too many results when you do your searches.
c. Having to get resources from Madison all the time is frustrating.
d. UB catalog doesn’t allow you to search multiple fields which makes finding the material you want difficult at times.
e. Voyager is strict about how you input information (no “the” or “a” articles at the beginning of a title for example).
f. Having flexibility of searching by title would be nice.
g. You have to know to invert the author’s last name.
h. When you need specifics, know what you need in broad sense, how can one get specific results- what terms to use (students have difficulty narrowing topics, thinking of synonymous search terms).
i. Finding articles not related to what you need, lots of results not related to topic.

Faculty (Question 3):
a. At the point where I’ve searched and searched and found exactly what I want, I get stopped by a password or told that I have to pay to get it.
b. ILL—I have to type in the title again—that extra step is not necessary (but another faculty member told her that this can be done).
c. FindIt is useful.
d. Expensive.
e. In using of web based programs – Ebsco host seems to change a lot, gets frustrating , not intuitive
f. Ebsco used to be easier, more intuitive, simple keyword search not as effective.
g. Library catalog search page - when doing to do a search - the default is not expected (in catalog default is keyword, she thinks she’s doing a title search) - and can’t find what she’s looking for
h. Problems w/ reading microfilm, harder to read.
i. Local papers not here at the library (and we do not have indexes).  Do local historical societies have indexes?  We need to find out - faculty could use it.
j. Doing more local history - students complain about going to local libraries - what can we do about it.
k. Zero time appointment at Madison - give access to resources to UW-Madison - how can UWP faculty get this designation.


4. The majority of online survey respondents indicated that identifying relevant materials within search results is the most challenging part of doing research. If this is true for you, can you say in more detail what part of identifying materials causes you trouble and how you think we could make this easier for you?

Students (Question 4):
a. Yes, this is true for some, but not for all.  For others, going through the results because there are so many is the hardest part.
b. We need more description.
c. A larger font would be nice.
d. Articles give synopsis.
e. Books don’t give much information.
f. Really like the cover images in our catalog now and the related books.
g. Didn’t know about the table of contents, but that would be nice to allow you to have more information.
h. It’s hard to know how to view an ebook (2 students).
i. People don’t know the terminology: what is microfilm/fiche, bound journals, etc.
j. One person didn’t know what a VHS tape was.
k. ILL takes too long.
l. The “Private ID” is really dumb and how to find it is difficult to find sometimes.
m. By providing information on browsers (would like access to the most up-to-date, accurate and user friendly).
n. Non-traditional students need help finding/using resources.
o. Need help w/ keywords- provide list of related topics (like Google’s hints of words to use) or synonyms to terms you use (2 students).

Faculty (Question 4):
a. Ranking and evaluating (see response to question #1).
b. The human filter is important--peer evaluation.
c. Abstracts are helpful.
d. Tagging by other people who have read it is helpful.
e. Know they can ask librarians for help, NEED library to promote itself more outside of library.
f. Students can’t visualize where resources are, physical resources have moved to electronic format, how can we teach students somehow info has moved from physical to e-form.
g. What periodicals are, newspapers, journal etc. a flowchart? Nameless blob of information, always making better databases, but students can’t tell difference between journal/magazine/book.
h. Glossary, pictures of what journals look like, don’t understand what full text is, or keyword searching - would like more tutorials.
i. Some Just for your consideration pages.
j. Would like a display - poster - of what we have in physical collection.
k. Break out some of info lit into tutorials on guide and tutorials page.
l. Some think too many web pages - too much online, students need to do things physically on paper, less anxiety if can walk through process - less online more physical presence.
m. Miss scavenger list - but like what we have online- don’t move from website - need both paper and electronic handouts.


5. Think of a wonderful, off-beat resource that you found that sparked a new idea, or perfectly matched your research topic. What was the path you took to get to the resource? (i.e. did they go from MadCat to Amazon to Google Scholar or MetaLib to citations to MadCat…)

Students (Question 5):
a. Bib from book to source.
b. Sometimes use of the subject heading from a book I find to another resource.
c. Found it on amazon to see if a book actually exists.
d. Use of the public library catalog because their resource is basic and more flexible.
e. Get citations from Wikipedia.
f. Don’t necessarily need citations in the catalog.
g. Fan fiction.
h. Youtube.
i. Spoiler pages.
j. Gossip page.
k. Facebook.
l. One-manga (Japanese comics).

Faculty (Question 5):
a. Google.
b. Recommendation from a colleague.
c. A print magazine. This art faculty member was looking for examples of painting with glitter (but not T-shirts).  She found a website in Craft magazine where other artists can sell their work and there is no censor on it--anyone can post their stuff.
d. Social bookmarking.
e. Google - great to use if not sure where to start or what to use.
f. Worldcat - like ability to search and order- through library webpage.
g. Amazon - go directly - keyword, get ISBN and then ILL.
h. Research on magazine editor, found 2 volume bibliography for that magazine, hard to find, not w/ other materials, sometimes the resource doesn’t show up easily, important to browse stacks
i. LII.org - like that content has been reviewed/ annotated.
j. Westlaw.
k. Wikipedia- helpful to start with, lots of perspectives.
l. Reference librarians are great resources.
m. Ask a librarian (instant messaging)- like speed - ease of use.
n. Students used to finding their info on their own - used to rote testing and not comfortable asking for assistance or evaluating quality of results.