User Scenario for the ARL Scholars Portal "Single Search" Option

A student is at her workstation at home on a holiday, and the library is closed. She logs on through her ISP and, since library orientation included information about the Scholars Portal, she already has the bullet/logo for it added to her own start page. She clicks into the SP search page and chooses the "single search" option, and types in a few keywords for her topic. (She could also have chosen a "restricted search" option, and limited it to full-text databases, to web resources, or other options.)

Meanwhile, pages of full text are printing off from the student's printer; her university credit account is being debited where necessary; her ILL requests for monographs have gone into her library's ILL system for routing to another library based on locally defined policies; and another library (or a document delivery service) is busy getting an article to send to her digitally the next day. One of the pages that prints out is a list of just the book citations for items held in her local library, arranged in call number order so she can pick them from the stacks if she wants.

ARL Scholars Portal Project Statement

The ARL Scholars Portal Working Group recommends the construction of a suite of web-based services that will connect the higher education community as directly as possible with quality information resources that contribute to the teaching and learning process and that advance research. Central to the Scholars Portal service is a discovery tool that enables a user to search across certain limited but diverse and distributed websites, library catalogs, and databases of information resources to retrieve and integrate the results in a single presentation.

The project addresses a problem common to all ARL libraries -- the challenge of providing users with a single point of access to resources emanating from library collections, museums, higher education and other research institutions, government and inter-governmental agencies, etc. The Working Group concludes that the technology is or could reasonably be at hand to facilitate cross-database searching in ways that address this problem. In fact, the Working Group is aware that a number of non-profit and commercial agencies are engaged in efforts that share the same or a very similar vision. However, many and perhaps all of these initiatives may accomplish the integration of metadata across different electronic resources and databases only within a relatively narrow scope (e.g., within a particular proprietary environment or subject area), or the scope is biased by commercial objectives. The Working Group will pursue the development of a discovery tool that operates across both licensed and openly available content in a broad range of fields and delivers high-quality resources.

Strategic Context

The decision to pursue a Scholars Portal "single search" option grew from the recognition of a change in how people are searching for information (relying on keyword searches in a single-step search engine that retrieves information from an unspecified slice of the World Wide Web). This project will enable academic desktops to be connected to the web more effectively by presenting academic-quality collections and library expertise in a way that more closely matches the searching style and expectations of a new generation of students and faculty.

How Would the SP Search Engine be Used?

A single search applied across the wide range of materials available through the Scholars Portal brings in results from the local catalog, other research library catalogs, selected web sites, locally licensed full-text and abstracting/indexing databases, public domain or publicly accessible abstracting and indexing services, finding aids for special collections and archives, and library digitized resources. The Scholars Portal is more than a sophisticated search tool as it will also link to other library services. For example, users may rely on a variety of access and delivery mechanisms, including linking directly to full-text articles, digitized resources and recommended websites, retrieving print materials from the library shelves, or requesting document delivery of non-locally held materials through interlibrary loans or commercial vendors. Users may also link to 24/7 reference services to consult with a reference librarian.

Phase 1: Identify Partners for Constructing a Search Engine

Phase 1 of the project centers on the development of a cross-platform search capability. The strategy adopted by the Working Group is to identify interest from within the broad community of software developers (non-profit and commercial) who might partner with ARL in the construction of a search tool that provides certain core features. An overview of those features is described below.

At a conceptual level, a user's search through the Scholars Portal would query two distinct streams of electronic resources and databases. Both streams are limited to resources that are defined by the project as being of high quality, for example, based on the credibility and reliability of the hosting institution. One way of envisioning the scope of resources the search would be limited to is to define it as the universe that is available directly or indirectly via the subject web pages and online catalogs of ARL member libraries. This would include the resources available from the websites of certain research institutes, national laboratories, scholarly societies, museums, etc.

A single search would amass metadata from these different sources in two streams. The two streams are:

1. A universal stream comprised of unrestricted resources (web pages and searchable databases) from websites targeted for quality and academic relevance.
2. A local stream comprised of information from locally available databases that have access restricted to users from that institution (by license or other agreement).

The result is a merged list of citations, de-duplicated, with indicators of the sources from which the search engine identified the citation. The list will be capable of being sorted, for example, to reflect whether the items are available immediately as full text, available in the local library collection, or via ILL or another delivery option.

Key Categories to Include in Phase 1

In the initial phase, the Scholars Portal "single search" option would search across the following five categories of information and therefore need be able to map against different types of metadata, the range of which is likely to be significant. Examples of types of metadata are noted below in parenthesis.

• Library Online Public Access Catalogs (that conform to Z39.50) (MARC, but not all fields)
• ARL libraries’ subject web pages as well as those of other research sites (encoded in HTML, SQL, SGML)
• Public domain or publicly accessible A&I services, such as Medline, Popline, etc.
• Finding aids for special collections and archives (EAD) and
• Resources digitized locally (MoA2 and possibly other)

Interface to Locally Licensed Databases

In addition, the project will investigate different options that establish an interface between the Scholars Portal search engine and locally available, restricted databases within the stream of local resources. For example, for users associated with a library with a license to provide Silver Platter or ISI databases, what would have to happen for that user to find Silver Platter or ISI resources integrated into their Scholars Portal "single search" results?

Who is the Audience?

In the most general terms, the audience for the Scholars Portal "single search" option is the higher education community. Phase 1 of the project is defined to reach a large audience that could immediately benefit from exposure to such a search tool and associated services: undergraduates. The most probable initial deployment is in support of undergraduate instructional programs that require some library research to complete course requirements. As a result, the initial target audience is teaching faculty and undergraduate students. Subsequent to phase 1, the Working Group sees possibilities of adapting the search engine capabilities to fields of inquiry that could serve the needs of advanced academic specialists, especially those who are engaged in cross-disciplinary research.

The Scholars Portal Working Group also sees need and opportunities to expand the scope of Scholars Portal services beyond those provided by the discovery tool with linkages to delivery services and virtual reference services. For example, another set of services that the Working Group sees as needed are those that provide academic authors with a "easy to publish" site where common formats make it straightforward for an author to contribute resources. The audience for this service expands to the entire higher education community.

Current Status and Next Steps for the Project

The Scholars Portal Working Group is now engaged on four sets of activities.

• Elaboration, refinement, and ranking of the features, functionality, and content associated with the Scholars Portal "single search" tool.
• Conducting a process of discovery to inventory similar products and efforts in order to identify and assess opportunities for collaboration.
• Development of a project plan that defines: phases of the project, options for how to develop the discovery tool, options for enabling financial strategies (developmental and operational), options for market deployment (integrating the tool into work environment of the user), and key considerations to influence decisions made in the development of the project.
• Development of a communication strategy and process for integrating feedback.

ARL Scholars Portal Working Group

Jerry Campbell, University of Southern California, Chair Ken Frazier, University of Wisconsin Olivia Madison, Iowa State University Sarah Michalak, University of Utah Sarah Pritchard, University of California-Santa Barbara Brian Schottlaender, University of California- San Diego Carla Stoffle, University of Arizona Sarah Thomas, Cornell University Jerome Yavarkovsky, Boston College

Staff Liaison

Jaia Barrett, ARL Deputy Executive Director jaia@arl.org

Project Advisors

Mary Jackson, ARL Senior Program Office for Access Services mary@arl.org
Rick Johnson, SPARC Enterprise Director rick@arl.org
Duane Webster, ARL Executive Director duane@arl.org

Background

For background on the ARL Scholars Portal, see the following:

The Case for Creating a Scholars Portal to the Web: A White Paper by Jerry D. Campbell, Chief Information Officer and Dean of University Libraries, University of Southern California
ARL Bimonthly Report, #211, August 2000

Abundance, Attention, and Access: Of Portals and Catalog by Sarah E. Thomas, University Librarian, Cornell University Library
ARL Bimonthly Report, # 212, October 2000

Scholars Portal: Summary of October 2000 ARL Membership Meeting Discussion