WEB SCALE DISCOVERY SERVICE: TRANSFORMING THE WAY TO AN ACADEMIC LIBRARY ENVIRONMENT

Dr. Mahendra K Sahu, Librarian, GIMSGandhi Group of Institutions, Gunupur

Introduction Academic library is considered as the center hub of

knowledge. The main goals of the Libraries are to connect its users

with information they need with maximum relevancy. To attains its requirement different kinds of Lib auto and

Digital Lib Software have been developed so for. The Impact of Information Technology and the evolution

of Google Search engine has made drastically change the information seeking behavior of library users.

The users needs unified information in a single search result.

Most of the libraries has been struggling the difficulty from years

To meet these difficulty the first meta search and federated search have evolved in past.

Due to its lengthy process , it doesn’t sustain. During the late, 2007 WSD service had evolved,

which has a potential to search all the available resource in a single search with relevance

Introduction

What is Web Scale Discovery Service It refers to a group of products that index a

wide number of resources in various formats and allow users to search for content in the physical collection, print and electronic journal collections, and other resources from a single search box.

It has the capacity to connect the researchers more easily with the vast information repository of the library including both locally and hosted content i.e physical holdings, digital collection and local institutional repositories.

Why Web Scale Discovery Service?It play the most important role in transforming the library service.Continuing proliferation of formats, tools, services and technologies.Libraries spends huge fund to words subscription of journal and other data base.User bit confusion to chose their relevancy.Users expect simplicity and immediate access i.e Google like of search engine

Feature of WSD service Web-scale discovery service enables users

quickly and easily searches across a broad range of library content.

It provides unified platform to search all the resources including licensed, open and local collections

It generates Pre-harvested central index of metadata

It Provides Google like single search box Determine to give single results list for all

collections Retrieve relevancy ranking across entire

results

Full featured user interface Facets and tools for narrowing results Holdings and status information for library

catalogue items Connections to full text Infrastructure, processing and indexing

provided and maintained remotely by the vendor.

Feature of WSD service

Component of WSD serviceTwo main components are required to constitute a Web scale Discovery service

Content: Content is the first prime factor i.e, E-Database, E-journal

Technology: through which a user can retrieve all the relevant information from the available resources.

Frame work of WSD service

Relevance basedResults

CENTRALINDEX

HARVESTER

LINKRESOLVERS

Library Catalogue

Digital Repository

E-journal

E-Databases

Open source Resources

Full text

Harvester It is one of the most important tools to bring the content to the

central index of the system. It is a software program or boot designed to parse through

large amounts of data, such as web pages on the Internet, to extract specific information.

Each vendor has agreements with several content suppliers from whom they harvest materials.

Moreover, they harvest locally held material such as existing library catalogues and institutional repositories within the library using protocols such as OAI-PMH and FTP. Automated transfer routines, load tables, and indexing steps are in place to add newly published content and to keep the index up to date

Metadata mapping Metadata is a “data about data”, providing wide verities of information

describing a resource, i.e the subject matter and its creators, technical information to archive and access the resource, legal rights, etc.

It maintains the interrelation between the information and are being used to find. gather, and maintain resources over long periods of time.

It help user to retrieve information within a single collection with more reliable.

Platform blending: Platform blending is the technology to infuse results from important subject indexes into the discovery experience for users.

Central IndexCentral index is a searchable content of Web scale Discovery service, which consists of pre-harvested and processed metadata of full text content. Generally it comprises of citations from

publishers, metadata from open source collections, abstracting and indexing from aggregators and subscriptions.

It is hosted in cloud environment and managed by the service provider against which searches are carried out in response to users need.

This system use automated processes that allow new content to be included and indexed rapidly

Link Resolvers It is an OpenURL standard designed to facilitate linking from

information resources to target audience . The linking is mediated by "link resolvers", or "link-servers", which

parse the elements of an OpenURL and provide links to appropriate targets available through a library by the use of an OpenURL knowledge base.

Web scale discovery service makes use Link Resolvers to work with the huge diversity of information resource in the present environment. The vendors of Web scale Discovery service make agreement with content suppliers in order to provide user based service with collaboration on their own subscription.

Relevancy Algorithm It is an encoded procedure based on pacified calculations for transforming input

data into a desired output and helps user to provide relevancy information from huge databases.

It is an endeavor to determine how a document or entry strongly fits possible search terms.

Every vendors of Web scale Discovery service has developed their own proprietary algorithms in order to provide relevancy ranking search result.

However, no system will ever be perfect for all searches by all users. Some services allow the local library to influence the algorithm or otherwise promote or boost items within search results, and, depending on the service, this boost may be at the item level, collection level, or database level. Some vendors may place greater emphasis on currency, some on full text, and some on subject headings. Depends on the relevancy algorithms, search results may be different.

Interface Generally, Interface is the interaction between a user and software running on a Web server and it is available in the front end the Web scale Discovery service. Vendor are providing various features and functionality as follows:- A single search box (but with a link to advanced search modes) Faceted searching Faceted navigation (subject, content type, publication date range, etc.) to help users drill down a large set of results

Inclusion of enriched content such as book cover images Shopping carts to easily mark items and later export the materials (email, print, save) Social networking tools, etc. Web 2.0 features Ajax features to update data without re-loading the whole page, but only the relevant content.

Interface

Planning and implementation of WSD Service Formation of Evaluation Committee Educate Library Stakeholders Schedule Vendor Demonstrations Create an Evaluation Rubric Draft RFP (Request for proposal) Interview Current Customers Configure and Test Local Trials Make Final Recommendation

Implementation of WSD service Integration of library catalogue with the web

scale discovery system. Activate subscribed databases or journal

titles/collection to be searchable in central index.

Synchronize with Open URL Knowledgebase. Add Local collections, Institutional archives. Customization and configuration the interface.

Conclusion Web scale Discovery service emerges as a new technology

and offer unified search result from both local and hosted service of library resources in the present academic environment.

It also gives relevancy ranking result and Google search like access to the end-user in a single search.

The Web scale Discovery service is still in underdevelopment stage.

Hence, more development needs in terms of its features functionality, integration level with other systems, scope of content and soundness of metadata and flexibility for the user interface to meet the expectations of today’s and next generation user.

Selection and implementation of Web scale Discovery service is a cumbersome process including a huge amount of investment of time, staff and resources.

Selecting a good Web scale Discovery service needs a careful and cautiously planned evaluation process, which will helpful further to other institutions as a blueprint of such service.

The entire library vendors and the open source communities must be incorporated with each other and work for true spirit of optimism to make the next generation web discovery service more efficient.

Conclusion

Any Question