Yocalcat's JISC LMS Blog

Yocalcat final progress post

• Background York St John University is a small institution of approx. 6,000 students, over 70% of whom are following full-time programmes of study in Arts, Education, Theology, Health and Life Sciences and Business with the remainder on part-time programmes in the same subject areas. York St John University Library and Information Services (LIS) currently shares its SirsiDynix Symphony Library Management System with the City of York Council, under a partnership arrangement set up in 2001, and had been aware for some time that the existing catalogue or OPAC interface was failing to meet user needs. 
• Intended outcome(s)  OCLC WorldCat Local is a resource discovery interface that works on the principle of one search box to search a variety of resources including physical items, e-material, databases and catalogues at the local level of the institutional catalogue but also the wider level of the WorldCat consortium of library catalogues.  It is a subscription-based interface, as opposed to one requiring capital funding. It was implemented at York St John since it was both affordable,  and would provide a better user experience than the current OPAC.  It would also provide federated searching across catalogues worldwide, as well as LIS’s subscription databases.  WorldCat is valued as a database by library staff and this is a means of retaining access when continued use was under threat.  Cataloguing and acquisitions processes would need to change as a result of the implementation.
• The challenge  The existing OPAC was failing to meet user needs.  It was seen as clunky and old-fashioned and there was user resistance to it.  There was no federated search facility so it was not really a discovery tool, no Web 2.0 features such as tagging and we simply required a better, more user-friendly interface.  Low NSS scores for LIS meant that something needed to be done to improve the user experience.  Alongside the OPAC experience was the target to improve acquisitions and cataloguing workflows, and a redesign of LIS web pages.  Usability testing had already been identified as key to the new implementation. There were concerns that technically the implementation might not be easy to achieve.
• Established practice The OPAC had largely remained the same since implementation in 2001 with a few cosmetic changes being done over the years.  This is largely due to the technical team being very small but the existing interface is not easy to amend, requiring a large amount of time to identify where changes can be made and how to make them.  It is not simply a case of changing style sheets.  Enrichment in the form of book covers, tables of contents, summaries etc., was acquired from a 3rd party supplier but with the move to a new software release was about to change to a different supplier.   Usability tests had been carried out by a member of staff as part of a MSc thesis, so there was an awareness of the limitations of the existing OPAC.   The existing link resolver was acquired via a 3rd party supplier, but was based on OCLC’s Link Manager with the same knowledge base.  Acquisitions and Cataloguing have been carried out following the inherent workflows in the Symphony system.  Records are downloaded from an external supplier at the order stage  and amended by the Database Librarian at the cataloguing stage to meet acceptable LIS guidelines and requirements for users.
  

  Library webpage incorporating search box

• The LMS advantage  Implementing OCLC WorldCat Local provided the opportunity to improve the OPAC experience as well as change other systems and processes.   We were keen to spend some time understanding how existing users would respond to the change in library catalogue, and as such decided on conducting task-based usability evaluations as these would enable us to directly observe users interacting with the software. It was our intention to use the understanding gained from these evaluations to inform any further changes to the configuration of WorldCat Local, and the design of information skills sessions. It is hoped that University students and staff will subsequently benefit from decisions to change search tools becoming strongly evidence-based, rather than based on assumptions held by library professionals.
  Becoming cataloguing members of OCLC brought changes not only to the downloading of records but also to the workflows and the point at which they are downloaded.  The OCLC Connexion client is used for cataloguing, the record being downloaded at the receipt rather than the order stage, so that an accurate match with the OCLC number that provides the link with WorldCat can be made once we have the physical item.  Cataloguing is then checked and amended in Connexion and if necessary further information is overlaid on the original record in Symphony. Enrichment is acquired from that existing in WorldCat and comes as part of the package, so a saving was made on paying extra for that.  The link resolver has been changed to OCLC Link Manager, a smooth process technically but the interaction with WorldCat Local is still being investigated.  Federated searching falls in the next phase of the project.
  

  WorldCat Local interface for York St John

• Key points for effective practice  The main points to emerge for us as a small institution were problems in the technical phase of getting data from the Symphony system and re-inserting the OCLC number in the 035 field.  Help is available from the wider WorldCat Local community, but this may not be a problem if you are already cataloguing via WorldCat. 
  The usability evaluations, although small in scale, uncovered several interesting issues that could be generalised across all of the users. In particular, users familiar with our previous OPAC but new to WorldCat Local were slow to recognise the power of the facets in filtering and organising search results, were not confident in conducting speculative searches (ie, on a broad topic rather than for a particular item) and were highly confused over the relationship between print journals, eJournals and articles. It would well behoove libraries considering transitioning from a traditional OPAC to WorldCat Local to focus information skills sessions in these areas.
  Ensure that all staff are involved with the processes whether on the acquisitions and cataloguing side or are involved in preparing material for induction.  Timing of any project is important here and our initial project timescale overran so we were not as prepared for induction as we might have been.  Implementation of WorldCat Local should be seen as a staged process, in order to maximise the advantages of moving to it, and to be able to implement fully the range of features.  As WorldCat Local links to such a large database and the interface is more of a “one size fits all” approach, there can be issues with the display of records, as we discovered with e-books.  There may be ways around the display as we also found but this is something to be aware of.
• Conclusions and recommendations When we began this project, now more than a year ago, we did not anticipate the steep learning curve necessary to make the implementation successful.  Being a small library with a very small technical team meant that some issues were more difficult for us to resolve.  It has also taken time to work through some of the acquisitions and cataloguing changes, and to resolve issues as they arose.  Many are still outstanding.  Federated searching and the lists feature are yet to be properly addressed and implemented, and they form part of the ongoing project.  Usability testing to date has produced largely positive responses in comparison to the previous catalogue interface.  We have identified some areas where OCLC should adapt to the UK market, rather than being US-centric, e.g. timing of webinars
  Our recommendations for institutions considering adopting WorldCat Local as their resource discovery interface are:

1. Ensure your current catalogue data is as accurate as possible if you are not already cataloguing to WorldCat standards
2. Be familiar with your Library Management System’s method for exporting and reimporting data and check for instructions on interfacing with WorldCat Local
3. Accept that your cataloguing and other workflows may need to be adapted to fit in with cataloguing with WorldCat
4. Ensure all staff are fully aware of the implications of working with a new catalogue interface, particularly those involved with induction processes

For the wider community OCLC WorldCat Local is recommended as a product that sits well beside the other resource discovery interfaces currently on the market.  As a subscription model with an implementation fee it is attractive for those organisations that do not have large capital amounts to spend, but are able to commit some resource from their recurring budget.  For those libraries that catalogue through WorldCat or are considering doing so, and value WorldCat as a database, it is a logical next step if they also require a more user friendly interface than their existing one.  From a student experience viewpoint it makes the searching process easier, and once federated searching and central indexing of databases is set up, will provide access to several million records.  Usability tests carried out as part of this project indicate that it has been well received by most students, particularly when compared with the previous catalogue interface. 

• Additional information
  Link to new catalogue interface: http://library.yorksj.ac.uk/
  Project Website/Blog: https://yocalcat.wordpress.com/
  PIMS entry: https://pims.jisc.ac.uk/projects/view/1731 
  Detailed implementation report:  https://yocalcat.wordpress.com/oclc-worldcat-local/
  Usability study: https://yocalcat.wordpress.com/usability-study/