We built a log file parser a few years ago that crawls the web server logs every night and extracts some general information about the number of searches conducted on the library site. We include searches entered into any of the three tabs in the search box at the upper left of all library web pages as well as searches entered in Mirlyn, the library catalog. We anonymize the data, attempt to remove page refreshes and duplicate searches, and store the data away for future use.

The fall semester at the University of Michigan is 112 days long (111 in 2010). For year-over-year data gathering, I defined the semester as starting with registration and ending on the last day of exams. In 2012, that means August 31 to December 20, inclusive. During the fall semester, library website visitors conducted a total of 1,201,103 searches.

Search Category	Searches 2010	Searches 2011	Searches 2012
MLibrary	440,220	431,592	431,500
Articles *	110,702	245,898	326,457
Catalog **	15,154	492,157	443,146
Total	566,076	1,164,360	1,201,103

^* Includes both searches from the ArticlesPlus tab in the search box and searches launched from the ArticlesPlus interface.
^** Includes both searches from the Catalog tab in the search box and searches launched from the library catalog, except for 2010 where it only includes searches from the Catalog tab on the site search -- not searches originating in Mirlyn itself.

Search Patterns

The pattern of search volume overall is very regular and predictable year over year, as shown in this chart. For the previous two years, the peak day was on day 88; this year, it was (by slim margin of 175 searches), the following day, day 89 (November 27, 2012). Still the peaks and valleys track from year to year with clear regularity.

Click for full-size version of the Fall 2012 searches.

Searches by Category

One Search

Searches in the library's default MLibrary tab are remarkably constant across the past three years. The MLibrary tab is our "one search" tab, bringing back results from several categories: databases, journals, items from the catalog, research guides, web pages, collections, subject specialists, and the staff directory.

Click for full-size version of the Fall 2012 searches.

Article Discovery

The ArticlesPlus tab in our site search, and the ArticlesPlus article discovery service that underlies it, has shown significantly increased usage over the past few years. For most of 2010, from January through late September, the article search tool was driven by Ex Libris' Metalib product. In September 2010, the library launched a Summon-powered interface (see ArticlesPlus: Article Discovery on MLibrary Site for more information on ArticlesPlus). Usage increased immediately, and has been growing every since.

Click for full-size version of the Fall 2012 searches.

The growth of use of the Summon-driven article search compared to Metalib is striking from the day it launched (day 27, or September 22, 2010). Daily searches in fall 2012 exceeded the equivalent day in fall 2011 each and every day.

Catalog

Where MLibrary searches were essentially the same for the past two years, and ArticlesPlus searches increased significantly, Catalog searches decreased by about 10%. The relative highs and lows tracked fairly well, though not as closely in step as the other two categories. (The blue line for 2010 shows only Catalog searches from the Catalog tab in the search box, unlike 2011 and 2012, when searches from within the catalog were included.)

Click for full-size version of the Fall 2012 searches.

Looking Forward

Looking ahead to Winter 2013, I'll predict that the peak search day will be day 99 or 100.

The normal lighting setup has two banks of stationary lights providing illumination from both sides. This works well for books, posters, and flat media by providing uniform lighting across the flat surface, but is unflattering for 3D objects. The new setup, pictured below, includes mobile lights, shades, and a background screen, making it possible to photograph 3D objects to best effect. The lights and shades can be repositioned to illuminate objects from different angles, and allows the photographer to separate and control front vs. back illumination. The screen can adjusted to create a shallow or deep space behind the object, as needed.

The setup is already in place and has allowed DCU to photograph various 3D objects from library collections. Below is an example of an item from the Jewish Heritage Collection Dedicated to Mark and Dave Harris using the new equipment.

For more information about the setup, please contact Larry Wentzel, Digital Conversion Production Manager, DCU.

MTagger Tag Cloud

In addition to public "tagging" of items, we also used MTagger as the storehouse for items saved as a "favorite" in the library catalog. A favorite is distinct from a tagged item in that favorites are personal and private, accessible only to the individual who saved them. For example, if I had "tagged" the catalog record for a particular book, my tag would have appeared for all users in the tag cloud. Anyone could have clicked it, seen what else might have been identically tagged (by me or by others), explored other items that I had tagged, or other tags that I had used. By contrast, an item that I marked as a favorite was available only to me. Using MTagger was an inherently public act; using favorites is inherently private.

Usage patterns over the four and a half years that MTagger was part of our web site show a clear preference for "favoriting" items rather than tagging them. Of the total number of MTagger users and items, items saved through the catalog's favorites mechanism are the overwhelming majority (the "favorites" function in the catalog is a bit newer than MTagger, having been launched in the second half of 2009). MTagger's usage stats can be summarized as follows:

Retiring MTagger, Launching MLibrary Favorites

We have now completely retired MTagger. The tag cloud has been removed from the web site, catalog, and DLPS image collections. The new Favorites tool is more closely integrated with the resources that were used most frequently in MTagger (the catalog and Search Tools), and focuses on resources over which the library has control. To learn more about MLibrary Favorites, read the MLibrary Favorites post in this blog.

If you have questions, please contact Library Web Systems.

MLibrary Favorites allows library patrons to save citations from the catalog (Mirlyn), our article discovery system (ArticlesPlus), and the database and online journal finder (Search Tools) into a single favorites list and organize them with tags. This replaced the "siloed" favorites services, where there were independent favorites interfaces for each of those 4 tools, but no way to see all favorites at once.

Where favorites were accessed from within the "silo" they were created, Favorites are now accessed through "My Account" pages. Along with Favorites, you can also see your Mirlyn checkouts and holds, fines, media bookings, and interlibrary loan requests.

When someone saves an item as a favorite, they can optionally add one or more tags to help categorize saved items. When you decide to add tags, you can do one or more of the following:

1. Type in a comma-separated list of tags;
2. Pick from tags you have previously used; or
3. Use the abbreviations for the courses you are taking this semester.

One of the features of the new favorites tool that we're particularly excited about is the "Course Tags" option as an easy way for people to organize their saved resources for future use and bundle them together, perhaps with other library-provided resources. It seems a natural evolution of this tool to pull together Research Guides for a course or academic department, course syllabi, and an individual's saved resources in one place.

Anyone who used the previous favorites tools will find all their items in the new MLibrary Favorites, with the added benefit of being able to organize their saved items (including items previously saved). For easier access to your account, including Favorites, there's a new link at the top right of all library web pages:

The Favorites tool requires a uniqname or friend account. Anyone can sign up for a friend account; all you need is a valid email address. A friend account allows you to authenticate, but does not grant any particular permissions.

The new MLibrary Favorites tool will replace MTagger, the library's social bookmarking service. There will be an article posted in this blog in the coming weeks when MTagger is decommissioned. ]]> http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/blt/archives/2012/09/introducing_mli.html http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/blt/archives/2012/09/introducing_mli.html MLibrary Fri, 14 Sep 2012 10:06:25 -0500 In February we released the first part of the advanced search interface for HathiTrust full-text search. Advanced search allows users to combine a full-text search with searches within specific metadata fields such as Title, Author, or Subject.

For example if you want to find out where Charles Dickens used the phrase "the best of times" you can search for: [All of these words] [Dickens, Charles] in [Author] AND [This exact phrase][the best of times] in [Just Full Text]

The advanced search interface also allows you to set limits by publication date, format, or language. Multiple languages or formats can be selected.

Today we released the second phase of advanced search. You can now combine up to four different fields connected by the "AND" or "OR" operators, and any limits set are retained if you click on the "Revise this advanced search" on the search results page.

MTagger Tag Cloud

In addition to public "tagging" of items, we also used MTagger as the storehouse for items "favorited" in the library catalog. A favorite is distinct from a tagged item in that favorites are personal and private, accessible only to the individual who saved them. For example, if I had "tagged" the catalog record for a particular book, my tag would have appeared for all users in the tag cloud. Anyone could have clicked it, seen what else might have been identically tagged (by me or by others), explored other items that I had tagged, or other tags that I had used. By contrast, an item that I marked as a favorite was available only to me. Using MTagger was an inherently public act; using favorites is inherently private.

Usage patterns over the four years that MTagger was part of our web site show a clear preference for "favoriting" items rather than tagging them. Of the total number of MTagger users and items, items saved through the catalog's favorites mechanism are the overwhelming majority (the "favorites" function in the catalog is new, existing for the most recent 2 1/2 years of MTagger's existence). MTagger's usage stats can be summarized as follows:

Moving Toward Favorites

In fall 2011, the library launched "Search Tools Favorites", a way for authenticated library web site users to save databases and online journals (from Search Tools, our database and journal finder) and article citations (from ArticlesPlus, our Summon^TM-powered article discovery tool). From its launch on November 2, 2011, through March 29, 2012, 549 library visitors have added a total of 4682 favorites (3097 article citations, 1012 databases, and 573 journals).

We are also in the process of migrating Mirlyn Favorites into the new Favorites system (they still are being saved as tags behind the scenes). Here, 305 users have favorited 3031 catalog items.

Our current Favorites tool is "siloed" -- that is, users who have marked items as a favorite can see them in separate lists in Search Tools, one each for articles, databases, and journals. Users who want to see their Mirlyn favorites must go to Mirlyn to see them. During the summer, we will be launching a new integrated favorites interface that will allow people to see all their favorites in one place and to organize them into categories -- so that books, articles, and databases for a single project can be listed together. We are still working on this interface and related programming. User studies for the interface will take place in the coming month, and we expect to launch the new integrated favorites interface in the first part of the summer.

Retiring MTagger

We are in the process of retiring MTagger. We have removed the MTagger tag cloud from the catalog and DLPS image collections. At some point in May, after Commencement, we will remove the tag cloud from the footer of pages on the library web site, as well. Where we can, we will migrate any items saved with MTagger (items from the catalog, databases, or journals) into favorites.

If you have questions, please use the Web Systems Feedback Form to reach us.

Several weeks ago, I sent a link to a quick poll to a couple of listservs looking for information about what libraries have chosen to name their "save this for later" or "favorite" tool on the site. I received 12 responses (actually, 13; two people responded independently on behalf of Northwestern University's version of the tool; I consolidated their responses into one). The following table summarizes the information we received.

"Bookmarks" and "My Favorites" were the most common answers (5 out of 13 responses), and were the only names that garnered more than one response. Three respondents had some flavor of "list" (GalterLists, My List, and Shelves & Lists).

Most respondents reported being satisfied with the name they selected.

So what are we going to name our implementation? We're leaning toward keeping the same name as we have now, "Favorites," despite a small amount of discomfort with the idea that a scholarly article or a book is really a "favorite" resource, when it is simply being saved for future use. It's not perfect, but its function seems to be broadly understandable to users who favorite things on various web sites all the time, from Tweets to URLs in Internet Explorer.

January 18 compared to January 11, 2012

Here are some numbers to illustrate the point. For "Outage Wednesday" compared to the previous Wednesday (January 11), searches were up slightly: 4% overall, and 14.5% for the default default "MLibrary" site search:

January 17 compared to January 10, 2012

However, a somewhat larger overall increase is noted between the Tuesday before (January 17) and the Tuesday a week earlier (January 10): up 9% overall and 10% for the default "MLibrary" site search:

January 6-12 compared to January 13-19, 2012

For a 7 day week extending from the Friday before the outage to the Thursday after, when compared to the previous week, we see an actual decrease in Outage Week over the week before (a decrease of 2.45% overall, although a small 2.2 percent increase in the default "MLibrary" site search:

In addition to relevance ranking, searching for non-Latin languages such as Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew, or Thai, now matches the capabilities of the Full text search of all 9 million volumes.

The relevance ranking now will give volumes that match a user's query terms in both the OCR and in the title or author or subject a higher ranking than a match in only the OCR. There is much more work to be done in tuning relevance ranking, but this is a first step.

Search results can now be refined by selecting facets such as subject, date or author. Although selecting facets can help users drill down to narrow large result sets, using very specific terms and especially using phrases in quotes remain one of the best ways to get reasonably small result sets.

Over the next few months we will be releasing further improvements in ranking and more of the features identified by the task force.

As we looked at what our colleagues were doing and solicited feedback from library staff and library patrons, we realized that before we could contemplate adding another chunk of information to our search results, we needed to streamline what we already have. Therefore, we embarked on a redesign of the interface to give us room for new content and to improve the usability of what was being shown.

Google Analytics told us that most clicks to results were on the first 2 or 3 items in a result list; in some categories (such as our catalog) we were presenting up to 10 results. User feedback told us that we were not providing enough context for individual results to tell the user what they would get when they clicked. And just about everyone we asked noted that the results were presented in too small a font size for comfortable reading.

In response to this range of data and comments, we have revised the interface, giving more space to search results and drawing more attention to other sources of information for our site’s visitors. We have reduced the number of items in each section to a maximum of three, with more prominent "see all" links to get to all results for each category. (See screen shots at the bottom of this post -- or try it yourself from the library site.

We continue to present librarian subject specialists to match the search query in the right column, but have pulled out staff directory contacts to that column as well, removing them from the library web pages section. We have also added a new “Didn’t Find It?” section to the bottom center of the search results, inside of which are links to conduct the same search in ArticlesPlus (our Summon article discovery tool), Deep Blue (our institutional repository), and the HathiTrust. Links to subject-focused browse pages are also included here.

This redesign has put off the question of including ArticlesPlus results in the search results page, although we are likely to include them here now that there is space to do so. We are leaning this way for two reasons. First, because a review of search queries indicates that about a quarter of the searches conducted on our site would benefit from the inclusion of article-level results. Second, because of direct patron and staff queries requesting this feature.

New Search Results

Click for a full-size image.

Original Search Results

You can see the Article Discovery module in action on the University of Michigan Library web site. Simply type your query in the search box and click "Go."

The Article Discovery module requires a Summon API key, Drupal 6, PHP version 5.x, and a copy of the Summon API library for PHP to operate. The module provides a configuration page, a search results page, and blocks for displaying a search box and a facet box. Though the Article Discovery module will work in a generic Drupal theme, you will likely need some customization to fit cleanly into your library's existing site.

The Article Discovery module is available for installation: http://drupal.org/sandbox/bertrama/1119778. We look forward to hearing your experiences when using this module. Please provide feedback through the Drupal site or by contacting us directly.

• databases
• items listed in the Mirlyn catalog
• online journals
• research guides
• webpages from the library's website
• collections (both digital and other collections)
• items from the library's database of government documents
• items listed in the UM institutional repository, Deep Blue
• relevant library contacts, such as specific subject specialists and services

In each category, a maximum of 4-10 matches are displayed, depending on the category and the number of matches found.

The National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine Division is pleased to announce the release of a new Web interface (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/manuscripts/oh.html) to its oral history collections, as part of its growing electronic texts program. Content includes digital editions of transcripts and any accompanying audio content when feasible. Users can browse content by title, interviewee name, and subject. Full-text searching is available across all sub-collections, across each sub-collection, and within each transcript.

Browse the Archives and Modern Manuscripts Oral Histories to jump right into the audio content.

What It Does

Say, for example, you're on the Wikipedia page for President Franklin Roosevelt. You want to quickly find scholarly articles about him. Click the bookmarklet and you're given a box to edit the search query:

Click "OK" and you're taken to an ArticlesPlus search results page for that same query:

Where to Get It

The ArticlesPlus bookmarklet is on the University Library's MLibrary Labs site.

Credit

This bookmarklet is based on a similar one developed by Barbara Arnett and Valerie Forrestal at the Stevens Institute of Technology's S.C. Williams Library.