MetaLib - Making E-resources Earn Their Keep

Frank Parry USTLG, Edinburgh

17 June 2004

Loughborough – the facts! 13,500 students 2,800 staff serials – 4000 print, over 6000

electronic books – over 400,000 databases – over 200

E-resources earning their keep what e-resources?

e-journals and databases monitor usage statistics

& value for money promotion

database of the month training sessions

and now…MetaLib!

Portals JISC describes portals as:“a network service that brings together

content from diverse distributed resources using technologies such as cross-searching, harvesting, and alerting, and collates this into an amalgamated form for presentation to the user.”

Commercial portals offer: grouping of databases simultaneous searching(through Z39.50, web scraping and

xml) collation of results de-duplicating links to full text

Some commercial portals DigitaLink / iPac (Epixtech) ENCompass (Endeavour) Rooms (SIRSI) MetaLib (ExLibris) Millennium Access Plus (MAP) Portal

(Innovative) TalisPrism (Talis) ZPORTAL (Fretwell-Downing)

OpenURL is a linking technology & a protocol for

interoperability between services hotlinks from databases leads a

user to appropriate full text resources

Portals and linking at Loughborough MetaLib

portal of all our databases simultaneous searching of compliant

databases

SFX openURL links article records to library

catalogue and/or e-journals

Implementation of MetaLib & SFX

large team approach Systems, Support Services & Academic

Librarians

long time scale March – September

smaller, separate team implemented SFX

Discussions look and feel branding contents (electronic & print) authentication (VLE username &

password) Library’s web pages (which should

exist) information skills

Cataloguing & configuring

cataloguing easy form driven quality & content testing

configuration not so easy who should configure?

technical staff / academic librarians how many databases are cross

searchable?

Pilot and “live” piloted with 3 Academic

Departments focus groups Questionnaire positive feedback

“live” in September 2002 smaller MetaLib group (four people) on average half a day per week

What has it meant for the Library?

role of library staff very little change

enquiries are often easier to answer training simpler

Handout http://www.lboro.ac.uk/library/dbase/metalib.html

Online tutorial http://inhale.hud.ac.uk/perl/jump.pl?13-56

increased use of databases

Statistics increase in usage of databases

609%

0

20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

140,000

160,000

1st Q 2nd Q 3rd Q 4th Q

20012002

Statistics by database usage up

Zetoc 1385%SportDiscus 1207%ICEA 225%INSPEC 73%OCLC 79%ABES 36%IBSS 31%Beilstein

23%

usage downPsycinfo -

63%Lexis-Nexis -51%Mintel -36%RAPRA -31%UKOP -6%Art Abstracts -12%Compendex -4%

Top ten databases in 2003June July August September October

ArticleFirst Zetoc ArticleFirst ArticleFirst ArticleFirst

Zetoc ArticleFirst Zetoc Zetoc Zetoc

IBSS IBSS IBSS IBSS Ante

OPAC ASSIA ASSIA ABM IBSS

Ante Ante Ante OPAC ASSIA

ASSIA OPAC OPAC Ante OPAC

Compendex Inspec Inspec ASSIA Inspec

Inspec Compendex Compendex Inspec SportDiscus

BHI SportDiscus BHI Ceramic Abs Medline

Medline Medline SportDiscus Compendex BioSci

Comp & Info Eng Mat Medline Medline Compendex

BioSci Polymer Polymer SportDiscus Comp & Info

What does MetaLib mean to our readers?

students less reliance on Google? cross searchable versus

most appropriate?

researchers & academics using MetaLib cross

search more than anticipated

The future investigate:

usage statistics for e-journals searching behaviour of readers

incorporate new features of MetaLib e-journals

Thanks….

Parts of this presentation were originally created for a conference paper delivered

by Ruth Stubbings