[CODE4LIB] "How to get from what you've found to access":

[Jonathan Rochkind]

Changing the subject line, cause this is an interesting topic on it's own.
On 2/23/2012 2:45 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
This links to thoughts I've had about linked data and finding a way to 
use library holdings over the Web. Obviously, bibliographic data alone 
is a full service: people want to get the stuff once they've found out 
that such stuff exists. So how do we get users from the retrieval of a 
bibliographic record to a place where they have access to the stuff?

I think this is exactly right as a problem libraries (which provide 
various methods of access to items people may find out about elsewhere) 
should be focusing on more than they do.

I mentioned in a previous reply that this is in fact exactly the mission 
of Umlaut. A better direct link for people interested in Umlaut than the 
one I pasted before:

https://github.com/team-umlaut/umlaut/wiki

It's definitely a work in progress, like I said, I'm not saying Umlaut 
"solves" this problem.  But the thinking behind Umlaut is that you've 
got to have software which can take a machine-described "thing someone 
is interested in" and tell them everything that your institution (which 
they presumably are affiliated with) can do for them for that item. 
That's exactly what Umlaut tries to do, providing a platform that you 
can use to piece together information from your various silo'd knowledge 
bases and third party resources, etc.  And including ALL your stuff, 
monographs etc., not just journal articles like typical "link resolvers".

After that (and even that is hard), you've got to figure out how to 
_get_ people from "where they've found out about something" to your 
service for telling them what they can do with it via your institution. 
That's not an entirely solved problem. One reason Umlaut speaks 
"OpenURL" is there is already a substantial infrastructure of things in 
the academic market that can express a "thing someone knows about" in 
OpenURL and send it to your local software (including Google Scholar).  
But it's still not enough.

Ultimately some kind of LibX approach is probably required -- whether a 
browser plugin, or a javascript bookmarklet (same sort of thing, 
different technology), a way to get someone from a third party to your 
'list of services', even when that third party is completely 
uninterested in helping them get there (Amazon doesn't particularly want 
to help someone who starts at Amazon get somewhere _else_ to buy the 
book! Others may be less hostile, but just not all that interested in 
spending any energy on it).

Jonathan
I see two options: the WorldCat model, where people get sent to a 
central database where they input their zip code, or a URL-like model 
where they get a link on retrievals that has knowledge about their 
preferred institution and access.

I have no idea if the latter is feasible on a true "web scale," but it 
would be my ideal solution. We know that search engines keep track of 
your location and tailor retrievals based on that. Could libraries get 
into that loop?

kc

On 2/23/12 11:35 AM, Eoghan Ó Carragáin wrote:
That's true, but since Blacklight/Vufind often sit over
digital/institutional repositories as well as ILS systems&  subscription
resources, at least some public domain content gets found that otherwise
wouldn't be. As you said, even if the item isn't available digitally, 
for
Special Collections libraries unique materials are exposed to potential
researchers who'd never have known about them.
Eoghan

On 23 February 2012 19:25, Sean Hannan<shan...@jhu.edu>  wrote:

It's hard to say. Going off of the numbers that I have, I'd say that 
they
do
find what they are looking for, but they unless they are a JHU 
affiliate,
they are unable to access it.

Our bounce rate for Google searches is 76%.  Which is not 
necessarily bad,
because we put a lot of information on our item record pages--we 
don't make
you dig for anything.

On the other hand, 9% of visits coming to us through Google searches 
are
return visits. To me, that says that the other 91% are not JHU 
affiliates,
and that's 91% of Google searchers that won't have access to materials.

I know from monitoring our feedback form, we have gotten in increase in
requests from far flung places for access to things we have in special
collections from non-affiliates.

So, we get lots of exposure via searches, but due to the nature of how
libraries work with subscriptions, licensing, membership and such, 
we close
lots of doors once they get there.

-Sean

On 2/23/12 1:55 PM, "Schneider, Wayne"<wschnei...@hclib.org>  wrote:

This is really interesting. Do you have evidence (anecdotally or
otherwise) that the people coming to you via search engines found what
they were looking for? Sorry, I don't know exactly how to phrase this.
To put it another way - are your patrons finding you this way?

wayne

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On 
Behalf Of
Sean Hannan
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 12:37 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Local catalog records and Google, Bing, Yahoo!

Our Blacklight-powered catalog (https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/) 
comes
up a lot in google search results (try gil scott heron circle of 
stone).

Some numbers:

59% of our total catalog traffic comes from google searches 0.04% 
of our
total catalog traffic comes from yahoo searches 0.03% of our total
catalog traffic comes from bing searches

For context, 32.96% of our total catalog traffic is direct traffic and
referrals from all of the library websites combined.

Anecdotally, it would appear that bing (and bing-using yahoo) seem to
drastically play down catalog records in their results. We're not 
doing
anything to favor a particular search engine; we have a completely 
open
robots.txt file.

Google regularly indexes our catalog. Every couple days or so. I 
haven't
checked in awhile.

We're not doing any fancy SEO here (though, I'd like to implement some
of the microdata stuff).  It's just a function of how the site 
works. We
link a lot of our catalog results to further searches (clicking on an
author name takes you to an author search with that name, etc).  
Google
*loves* that type of intertextual website linking (see also: 
Wikipedia).
We also have stable URLs. Search URLs will always return searches with
those parameters, item URLs are based on an ID that does not change.

All of that good stuff doesn't help us with bing, though. ...But 
I'm not
really concerned with remedying that, right this moment.

-Sean

On 2/23/12 12:37 PM, "todd.d.robb...@gmail.com"
<todd.d.robb...@gmail.com>
wrote:

First of all, I'm going to say I know little in this area. I've done
some preliminary research about search indexing (Google's) and
investigated a few OPAC robot.txt files. Now to my questions:

    - Can someone explain to me or point me to research as to why 
local
    library catalog records do not show up in Google, Bing, or Yahoo!
search
    results?
    - Is there a general prohibition by libraries for search 
engines to
    crawl their public records?
    - Do the search engines not index these records actively?
    - Is it a matter of SEO/promoted results?
    - Is it because some systems don't mint URLs for each record?

I haven't seen a lot of discussion about this recently and I know
Jason Ranallo has done a lot of work in this area and gave a great
talk at code4lib Seattle on microdata/Schema.org, so I figured this
could be part of that continuing conversation.

I look forward to being educated by you all,

Tod