Spotlight on the Digital: increase discovery of your digital resources

“If I can't find it, I can't use it.”Make sure your digitised resources are easy to discover

The Spotlight on the Digital project http://bit.ly/Spotlight_project

Paola Marchionni, Head of digital resources, Jisc 4 Sep 2014

The Spotlight project found that digitised collections are like a treasure chest at the bottom of the sea: it’s there but not many people can find it.

A treasure chest at the bottom of the sea

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Spotlight investigated this challenge and identified practical solutions for “surfacing the jewels”, so that collections become more discoverable through the channels most commonly accessed by users .

Surfacing the treasure chest

Databases, library catalogues

Personal recommendations

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Survey of Academics 2012, Ithaka S+R, Jisc, RLUK, p21 http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5209/1/UK_Survey_of_Academics_2012_FINAL.pdfSpotlight literature review of discovery behaviours http://bit.ly/Spotlight_behaviours/

Surfacing the treasure chest

Personal recommendations

Databases, library catalogues

Survey of Academics 2012-~ 40% …. begin their research processes at a general purpose search engine on the internet or world wide web-~ one-third … begin their research at a specific electronic research resource -~ less than 15% … start with an online library catalogue or a national or international catalogue or database-only a very few (2%) reported starting their research with a visit to the library building

The Spotlight on the Digital project

The Spotlight on the Digital projectWhat is it?

Partnership project between Jisc, RLUK, SCONUL (Jun ‘13-Jan ‘14). http://bit.ly/Spotlight_project

Part of Jisc co-design pilot programme to tackle sector’s concerns and develop new products and services http://www.jisc.ac.uk/research/funding

Phase 2 starts in September 2014 and will last 2 years

Aim

define the discoverability problem in relation to digitised collections identify practical solutions to improve their discoverability

What Spotlight did Project gathered quantitative and qualitative evidence from:

Expert group mtgs (15 library managers, curators and academics)

Literature review on online information seeking behaviour http://bit.ly/Spotlight_behaviours

Web-based assessment of 217 collections digitised between 1998-2003 funded by AHRC, Jisc and the New Opportunities Fund (of which 177 still live underwent manual and automated tests) http://bit.ly/Spotlight_outputs

What Spotlight did Technical forum – 18 technical practitioners and managers

Library focus groups – involving 24 library and collection managers from HE institutions and National Libraries

Library online survey – HE libraries with experience of digitisation (31 full institutional responses)

Caveat – no access to usage figures for digitised collections. Web assessment tests more about testing good practice for web publishing not level of usage or impact of collections as such.

What Spotlight found Global search engines – search engines (such as Google)

represent for the majority the default mechanism for discovering. But surveyed libraries believe key channels are open Institutional Repository first, and then Google and the Discovery Layer second.

Popular web-scale channels – Channels such as Wikipedia and Flickr are regarded as starting points for

students and researchers

Social recommendation – The impact of recommendation and in particular the roles of experts and peers should not be underestimated; it may become more explicit as online ‘social’ services achieve critical mass and become more embedded in practice.

What Spotlight found Undiscoverable collections – Some collections become “lost” to the web over time (about 20% of the web assessment sample). Reasons range from poor exposure to search engines to the loss of web access to the content itself to relocation within other collections or aggregation services – which doesn’t necessarily mean that collections don’t exist anymore.

Undiscoverable items – Items, as opposed to collections, are at most danger of being “lost” (only about 50% of items assessed appeared on the first page of Google results using the item name or title). http://bit.ly/Spotlight_items

Collections and item level performance tests

Vertical axes indicate highest possible scores, horizontal axes indicate all collections tested (177) From top left clock wise:

1) Collections search engine discoverability: generally score well/least badly as illustrated by less steep fall-off across the sample

2) Two items discoverability: difference in scores between best and worst is greater than for collections, fall-off is quite steady

3) Wikipedia: very strong performance of some of the overall best scorers, spikes of those who do/do not work on Wikipedia citations

4) Social media (twitter): strong leading group followed by a sharp fall-off.

These tests reveal degree of adoption of best practice and where there is scope for improvement – not “absolute” discoverability/use

Some great examples of good practice

Examples of good practice in discoverability from a variety of institutions, collection types and formats

http://sounds.bl.uk

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/newton

http://en.wikivet.net/OVAL

http://www.zandrarhodes.ucreative.ac.uk/

Spotlight on the Digital: outputs

#1: practical guides to improve discovery

Spotlight produced practical bite-size guides for creators of digitised collections covering 9 areas to improve discoverability http://bit.ly/Spotlight_guide

9 inter-related guides covering:

•make Google searches work for you•use social media•learn to use content aggregators•make collections available for teaching and learning•use popular web sites to reach broader audiences•improve the user experience•reach academic researchers•create collection champions•integrate with your organisation’s systems

All guides have same structure and some content items are in common.

Related Jisc resources Crowdsourcing: the wiki

way of working

Crowdsourcing: the wiki way of working http://bit.ly/crowdsourcing_jiscinfonetTIDSR: http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr

Toolkit for the Impact of Digitised Scholarly Resources (TIDSR)

#2: tools technical specifications National Library of Wales

Tool to assess and manage the discoverability of online resources

Technical specifications for tools to support collection managers with tasks that would make discovery of content easier http://bit.ly/Spotlight_outputs

University of Sheffield

Tool to develop discovery-friendly records

#3: Above campus recommendationsFinal report identified 7 areas for above-campus interventions:

ocapacity buildingoaggregationsoforesight grouporeliable reference service for automated url checking osoftware tools ocontent promotion olicensing services

Final report and recommendations at http://bit.ly/Spotlight_report

All Spotlight All Spotlight outputs Online guides Make your digital resources easier to discover

Final report

Technical specifications for tools to support collection managers with tasks that would make discovery of content easier

Web-based assessment of the discoverability of a sample of 177 digitsed resources

Literature review on online user behaviours

Online survey with libraries

All outputs at http://bit.ly/Spotlight_outputs

All Spotlight Next steps Spotlight has funding for phase 2: £200,000 over 2 years

Phase 2 starts Sep 2014

Prioritisation of above campus recommendations to identify viable services, tools and resources to develop, deliver and sustain

Development of online guide

Further consultation and community engagement activities

If you are interested in taking part in phase 2, please get in touch!

Thank you

Paola Marchionni, JiscHead of digital resources for teaching, learning and research

[email protected] @paolamarchionni

Digital Humanities Congress, Sheffield, 4-6 Sep 2014

Image credits

• Treasure chest - Fernando Gregory https://www.flickr.com/photos/63082794@N00/6030879386/lightbox/?q=treasure%20chest%20sea

• Social recommendation icon http://tinyurl.com/q2h2hyr

CC Attribution - apart for the above images