Electronic Resources and Libraries March 1, 2011 Austin, Texas Craig Harkema, Charlene Sorensen, Karim Tharani Transcendental Metadata: A Collaborative.

Electronic Resources and Libraries March 1, 2011 Austin, Texas Craig Harkema, Charlene Sorensen, Karim Tharani

Transcendental Metadata: A Collaborative Schema for eResource Description

Agenda What is the problem Benefits to dealing with the problem Guiding principles Methodology

• Information gathering• Metadata creation• Tool development

What we learned

University of Saskatchewan

~ 17 000 undergrads~ 3 000 grad students~ 1000 faculty including 44 librarians

~ $8.6M acquisitions budget

~ 800 electronic resources

Electronic resource: Anything digital available remotely via an electronic device But not individual e-books or e-journals

U of S librarians don’t feel like they have a handle on e-resources

Difficult for non-acquisitions librarians to understand the nature, extent and diversity of electronic resources

Not optimizing the potential of librarian expertise

What is the problem

Traffic Light Tree by Pierre VivantPhoto credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinrp/376595731/in/photostream/

Supporting librarian collaboration Facilitating accountability

• Budget• Service

Improving decision making and assessment

Benefits

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28337743@N03/264

Guiding principles

Appreciating different perspectives

Developing discourse- Not a case study

Keeping it fast and flexible- Not replacing an ERMS

Needs gathering & analysis Held consultations with colleagues Analyzed results Identified themes:

• Need to be prepared for ongoing evaluation of e-resources• Need more information to make decisions• Need to be able to deal with new resource types• Need information to be accessible • Need to be self-sufficient

Transcendental metadata Provides the foundation for tools Is the link between librarian and technology Takes into account non-acquisition librarians’

needs Capitalizes on the strengths of multiple

databases Uses both social tagging and consultation-

derived attributes Is collaborative and distributed

Attributes:- Source type - Liaison cluster- Bib# - Format/Type- Title - Locally hosted- Subject - Mobile compatible - License digitized - Perpetual access- Date acquired - COUNTER compliant

Locally responsive, not predetermined

Transcendental metadata

Metadata sources

ILS

License database

Liaisons

Tags

A-Z listSubject pages

Web 2.0 Collective intelligence User-centered Continuous feedback “Data is the ‘Intel Inside’ the next generation of

computer applications” – O’Reilly

Web 2.0

Smaller, more agile tools Less threatened by

marketplace Focused target Quick to revise Open sharing of databases Problem solving over

marketability

Methodology – moving along…① Gather needs – Consultations② Analyze needs – Metadata creation③ Implementation – Tool development

a) Approach - How do we do this?• Web 2.0 ethic• Looking outside the library realm

b) Solution - What do we do?• Accessible• Self-Service

Business Intelligence approach Business Intelligence (BI): Solutions that assist

decision makers in understanding the current state of their organization (Buchanan and O’Connell, 2006)

Characteristics of BI approach:• User-centric, collaborative approach• Transcends departmental/operational boundaries• Gathers and integrates data from relevant internal

and external sources to fulfill users’ needs• Distinction of operational vs. reporting systems

BI solutions – components Source systems

• Operational systems that have the necessary data e.g. ILS, ERMS, etc.

Data repository• A database to store the

summarized data e.g. data warehouse

User interface• Tools for users to

interact with the data repository for analysis, reporting, or mining

Source: Oracle Database Concepts - Business Intelligence

BI components @ USASK

Data source Catalogue Subject pages License database A-Z list

Data repository Themes Attributes Tags Integrated Normalized

BI tool Self-service Drag and drop Drill in and out Visualization

Getting the answers…

Connect Tableau to Excel worksheet

Drag-and-drop, filter and arrange desired columns using Tableau interface

Use Tableau interface to visualize relevant data in different ways with various graphing options

What we learned There is value in the process – voicing needs,

gathering and organizing, prioritizing, acting We can use involvement and expertise of all

librarians Web 2.0 mindset is a benefit within the

organization – small, fast, iterative, responsive It’s okay to take initiative – we don’t always have

to wait for vendors

Questions??

Metadata [email protected]

Serials [email protected]

IT [email protected]

Thanks to University of Saskatchewan Archives for campus and city images.