Stuart L. Weibel Senior Research Scientist, OCLC Research Visiting Scholar,
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Creating (Library) Value in the Age of the Amazoogles University of British Columbia 2006 September 18 Stuart L. Weibel Senior Research Scientist, OCLC Research Visiting Scholar, University of Washington iSchool
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Creating (Library) Value in the Age of the Amazoogles University of British Columbia 2006 September 18. Stuart L. Weibel Senior Research Scientist, OCLC Research Visiting Scholar, University of Washington iSchool. OCLC Research. Research and standardization: OCLC services Membership - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Transcript of Stuart L. Weibel Senior Research Scientist, OCLC Research Visiting Scholar,
Creating (Library) Value in the Age of the Amazoogles
University of British Columbia 2006 September 18
Stuart L. WeibelSenior Research Scientist, OCLC Research
Visiting Scholar, University of Washington iSchool
OCLC Research
Research and standardization:• OCLC services• Membership• Library evangelism to
the Web community Metadata management Knowledge organization Content management Interoperability Systems & interaction
design ~30 employees
What do we mean by value?
The Library Business Model• Make information look free to end users• Aggregation of public resources for management,
organization, and curation of public content The SCOAP (of the) Mission
• Selection• Collection• Organization• Access• Preservation
Return on investment Return of Patrons
Value Domains
Societal• Long term, authoritative curation of the cultural,
technical, and scientific assets of a society• Information Neutrality• Public Trust
Technical• Systems for supporting SCOAP activities
• Bookshelves• Cataloging (and catalogs)• Electronic systems
Value Domains (continued)
Social: So-called Library 2.0 approaches• Policies and services to promote community
engagement• Recommender Services (reader advisories)
• Ala Nancy Pearl?• People who bought X, also bought Y• LibraryThing
• Tagging – folksonomies: what value?• Public Bibliography
• What is more important for discovery? A book review or a MARC record?
• Linking structure among first class objects is a central feature of the Web
Extract (and exploit) value in structured data Holdings are key Enrich the data
• Amazon-like reviews• Cover Art
Controlled vocabularies• Terminology services• Classification systems• Folksonomies?
Authority control
Increase integration across boundaries
Make the OPAC irrelevant• Solution of last resort• The Green Screen of Boredom (or is that
envy?) “Weave libraries into the Web”
WorldCat in the Open Web
On these sites: Include either of the following with your search
terms:
Google "find in a library" (include phrasing quote marks) Yahoo! site:worldcatlibraries.org (no space after colon)
Other WorldCat Partner Sites:
Abebooks (abebooks.com) Alibris (alibris.com) Amazon.com (amazon.com) Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (abaa.com) Biblio (biblio.com) BookPage (bookpage.com) DirectTextbook (directtextbook.com) Google Scholar and Google Books (scholar.google.com,
books.google.com) Greenwood Publishing Group (greenwood.com) HCI Bibliography (hcibib.org) Windows Live Academic (academic.live.com)
Some general principles for technical value creation in a network environment
Reduce impediments to search Increase integration across boundaries Build Network Effect value Extract (and exploit) value in structured data Increase the efficiency of metadata creation Promote participation
• Book reviews• Linking• Recommender systems
Public Bibliography:The Tom Sawyer Strategy
Metadata is expensive Cataloging data is important, costly, and ill-suited to public
use (at least for some aspects of public use) Mobilizing users to be participants in the creation of
metadata (in the form of book reviews, recommender services, and linking, either explicit or inferred) is a potentially rich source of metadata and linking currency
Amazon is effective at this LibraryThing has a strong and growing approach Libraries and large cooperative cataloging agencies are
thus far not doing so well.
Book Reviews:Desirable Characteristics of First Class Objects Book Reviews are (should be) stand-alone First Class
Objects:• Harvestable• Attributable• Linked appropriately• Permanently identified• Curated
Link Currency
Linkages are an important currency on the Web:• Who links to you• Who do you link to
To rise in relevance rankings, library-managed links should be persistent and of one form:• http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26160663&referer=brief_results• http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=083890596X&qt=owc_search• http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=083890596X
• http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26160663
• Multiple identifiers are confusing, reduce ‘hackability’, and dilute link currency.
Libraries must compare favorably with related information experiences that our patrons expect:
Discovery and recommender services Web 2.0 social network capabilities Experiences of comparable commercial service providers Last-mile delivery capability Bookstore social experience
• Coffee-shop salons• People to help us navigate the intricacies of a
complicated knowledge space
We are offering an experience as well as a service
Stuart L. Weibel
Visit me at: http://weibel-lines.typepad.com
Contact me at: [email protected]
Thank you for your attention
