Using linked data and the WorldCat Discovery API to surface timely holdings

DAPI Diem is an exploratory tool developed during OCLC's Developer House event in December 2014 that attempts to highlight library holdings relevant for a given day. The tool queries the linked data source DBpedia using SPARQL to discover entities with a relationship to the day, ranks the entities using information about the entities' Wikipedia articles, and retrieves library holdings using the WorldCat Discovery API. Presented as part of "Linked Data-Driven Discovery: Applications and APIs from a User-Centered Perspective" at LITA Forum, November 13, 2015, Minneapolis, MN

Using Event Tracking to Enhance Library Web Interfaces

Event tracking allows for more fine-grained tracking of clicks, searches, and other user-initiated actions than is available through typical web analytics like page view and visit statistics. This session will describe using Google Analytics to track events across a library website, catalog, and discovery system. While traditional web analytics remain valuable, they fail to capture a full picture of how users interact with our online services, particularly with now common in-page features such as tabs and expanding/collapsing menus. This session will describe how library staff at the University of Kansas have used event tracking to monitor use of specific features of the Libraries homepage, our catalog, a databases A-Z list, and discovery system; discuss the technical skills necessary to implement event tracking; and demonstrate examples of the events we track. In particular I will cover the challenges of implementing event tracking on external sites over which we have limited control, like our hosted discovery system, and share how we've used the data from event tracking inform our efforts to assess and improve our online library services

The world's great solid waste management libraries

Solid waste knowledge is hard won and too easily lost. A large amount of that knowledge resides in each of our small offices. Many of us use photocopies of photocopies of reports from the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s, which may contain important data on topics like the performance of trommels for processing finished compost, or historic data on leachate quality, or economy-of-scale factors for incinerators. More and more, new professionals in the solid waste field do not know of these key documents and so are prone to wasting time and money pursuing information once known but now hidden

User Search Terms and Controlled Subject Vocabularies in an Institutional Repository

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the search behavior of institutional repository (IR) users in regard to subjects as a means of estimating the potential impact of applying a controlled subject vocabulary to an IR. The study presents a novel method for analyzing user search behavior to assist IR managers in determining whether to invest in applying controlled subject vocabularies to IR content. Google Analytics data were used to record cases where users arrived at an IR item page from an external web search and subsequently downloaded content. Search queries were compared against the Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) schema to determine the topical nature of the queries. Queries were also compared against the item’s metadata values for title and subject using approximate string matching to determine the alignment of the queries with current metadata values. A substantial portion of successful user search queries to an IR appear to be topical in nature. User search queries matched values from FAST at a higher rate than existing subject metadata. Increased attention to subject description in IR records may provide an opportunity to improve the search visibility of the content

Generation of Spin-Adapted and Spin-Complete Substitution Operators for (High-Spin) Open-Shell Coupled Cluster of Arbitrary Order

A rigorous generation of spin-adapted (spin-free) substitution operators for high spin ($S=S_z$) references of arbitrary substitution order and spin quantum number $S$ is presented. The generated operators lead to linearly independent but non-orthogonal CSFs when applied to the reference and span the complete spin space. To incorporate spin completeness, spectating substitutions (as e.g. $\hat{E}_{iv}^{va}$) are introduced. The presented procedure utilizes L\"owdin's projection operator method of spin eigenfunction generation to ensure spin completeness. The generated operators are explicitly checked for (i) their linear independence and (ii) their spin completeness for up to 10-fold substitutions and up to a multiplicity of $2S+1 = 11$. A proof of concept implementation utilizing the generated operators in a coupled cluster (CC) calculation was successfully applied to the high spin states of the Boron atom. The results show pure spin states as well as small effects on the correlation energy compared to spinorbital CC. A comparison to spin-adapted but spin-incomplete CC shows a significant spin incompleteness error.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, 5 table

Use and Usability of a Discovery Tool in an Academic Library

In order to assess the use and usability of a new discovery tool, staff at the University of Kansas Libraries conducted usability tests with twenty-seven users and analyzed three semesters of the tool’s usage as measured by custom event tracking implemented in Google Analytics and usage statistics drawn from the discovery tool and server logs. An initial study with sixteen users was conducted prior to launching the new tool, and a subsequent study with eleven users was conducted a semester after the launch. This article describes test participants’ success using the new tool to complete basic library research tasks, details the specific features they used in their attempts (e.g., facets, “did you mean” suggestions), and identifies areas where changes were made to address problems identified in the studies, including changes outside the tool itself. In addition, comparisons between feature use in the discovery system as observed in usability testing and feature use as measured by event tracking and log analysis are discussed, including implications for the design of future tests

Measuring the Impact and Effectiveness of Transitioning to a Linked Data Vocabulary

Language used to describe resources in an institutional repository may benefit from the consistency offered by a controlled vocabulary and an introduction into the larger linked data universe. Transitioning to a linked data vocabulary presents concerns regarding the effectiveness of mapping pre-existing terms and the potential for semantic loss. This paper describes such a transition to OCLC's FAST vocabulary in the University of Kansas institutional repository. It analyzes the outcomes of this transition and its subsequent impact on resource usage when exposed as linked data

User Search Terms and Controlled Subject Vocabularies in an Institutional Repository

Controlled vocabularies are an important mechanism for ensuring consistency in a repository and necessary for maximal collocation for searching by subject. Of the metadata fields used for retrieval, subjects are particularly valuable, allowing for a type of collocation less easily achieved through titles or abstracts. However, the quality of subject terms can vary based on policies guiding their selection. If controlled vocabularies present a solution for reducing metadata 'noise', one must also consider the search behavior of the user. How well do user queries align with a controlled vocabulary, and what's the level of effort required to reconcile legacy subject terms with a new vocabulary? Our analyses uses search queries which led users to items in the KU ScholarWorks institutional repository. These queries are reconciled against FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) terms, legacy subject terms, and more broadly across repository records to determine the potential effects on search behavior. The effort required to reconcile legacy metadata will be considered as the repository seeks to reconcile its history of uncontrolled language with a more systematic and extensible vision for the future. Presented at Open Repositories 2015, Indianapolis, IN, June 10, 2105