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The Future of Library Resource Discovery

NISO on the Road

About the Forum

Sponsored by:
EBSCO; SAGE; ExLibris; Elsevier; ProQuest; and Atlas Systems

In February 2015, NISO's Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee commissioned a White Paper from library consultant Marshall Breeding. The in-person meeting will be an extension of the white paper with a series of presenters and panels to offer an overview of the current resource discovery environment. Attendees will participate in conversations that will examine possibilities regarding how these technologies, methodologies, and products might be able to adapt to changes in the evolving information landscape in scholarly communications and to take advantage of new technologies, metadata models, or linking environments to better accomplish the needs of libraries to provide access to resources.

Attend remotely through Live Streaming or if unavailable on the day of the forum, receive access to the recorded version of the forum. (All in-person attendees will also receive access to the recording.)

 

Event Sessions

Day One: Monday, October 5, 2015

Speakers

Scott Bernier

Senior Vice President, Marketing
EBSCO Information Services

Steve Guttman

Senior Director of Product Management, Product Management
ProQuest

Ido Peled

Vice President, Solutions & Marketing
Ex Libris North America

Karen McKeown

Director, Product Discovery, Usage and Analytics, Gale
Cengage Learning

Gregg Gordon

President and CEO
Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

Julie Zhu

Manager, Discovery Service Relations, Marketing, Sales & Design
IEEE

Michael Levine-Clark

Dean and Director of the University of Denver Libraries
University of Denver Libraries

8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast & Networking

9:00 a.m. - 9:15 a.m. Welcome & Introductions
Todd Carpenter, Executive Director, NISO

9:15 a.m. - 10:15 a.m. Opening Keynote Presentation: The Future of Library Resource Discovery (On Live-Stream)
Marshall Breeding, Independent Library Consultant

Marshall Breeding will highlight some of the key findings of the white paper he developed for the NISO Discovery to Delivery topic committee. The presentation will include some updated information on the state of the current arena of commercial and open source discovery services, including trends in adoption and new technical and functional capabilities. Looking forward, Breeding will mention some longer-term possibilities and opportunities for discovery services to move beyond the current models of centralized indexes, including greater reliance on semantic technologies and linked data.

10:15 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Morning Break

10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Panel Discussion: Discovery Service Providers (On Live-Stream)
Moderated by: Marshall Breeding, Independent Library Consultant 

A panel of representatives of the four current index-based discovery services will discuss the current state of discovery and what their organizations are considering for future directions of development. Following a round of introductory comments, Marshall Breeding will facilitate a discussion among the panelists, including questions from attendees.

Panelists include: 

  • Scott Bernier, Senior Vice President, Marketing, EBSCO 
  • Steve Guttman, Senior Director of Product Management, Product Manager, ProQuest 
  • Mike Showalter, Executive Director, End-User Services, OCLC
  • Ido Peled, Vice President, Solutions & Marketing, Ex Libris North America  

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Lunch

 

Publisher and Library: Presentations (On Live-Stream)

1:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. A billion lessons learned on ways to make Discovery better:  What has Gale learned about Discovery Services and how can we re-imagine Discovery together?
Karen McKeown, Director, Product Discovery, Usage and Analytics, Gale | Cengage Learning

One billion+ documents later, what has Gale, a division of Cengage Learning learned along the way about working with Discovery Service partners? Since the very beginning of discovery services, Gale has worked with all major discovery service providers to make their content discoverable. What have been the greatest challenges and breakthroughs? What’s next to ensure resources are found and used best?

Karen McKeown, Director of Gale Discovery and Analytics will cover lessons learned, new initiatives, the role of NISO and ODI standards, and Gale’s work with Google and their own Cengage Learning education technology platform. Karen also draws from Gale’s study of 3,000 students and faculty members and Cengage’s “21 Voices” ethnographic student studies as related to Discovery and its future.

1:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Serendipitous Discovery
Gregg Gordon, President, Social Science Resource Network (SSRN)

Search and Browse often get confused in discovery systems parlance. While all of us know the definitions of these terms, it is easy to blend them into one idea or thought of how we find what we need. But what happens when we don’t know what we need? When we don’t know, what we don’t know?

What’s needed then? Luck? In the research process, a more formal name for luck could be serendipitous discovery. While luck is usually seen as a series of good or bad chance encounters, and rarely associated with scholarly research, there is a science of luck and it includes an individual’s attitude about feeling lucky. One of the key aspects of feeling lucky is a prepared mind.

Dans les champs de l’observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés. (In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.) - Louis Pasteur

A researcher needs to be ready to discover and, both she and the content provider, bear the responsibility of being prepared for that “lucky” moment. Luck, in the discovery process, can be the catalyst for innovation. Gregg's simple definition of innovation is the ability to create new things by being exposed to a broader and deeper set of existing things. SSRN’s goal is to be the broadest, deepest set of existing things in SS&H, and, help researchers discover better.

2:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Partnering to Improve Library Discovery Services: A Publisher’s Long-Term Commitment
Julie Zhu, Manager, Discovery Service Relations, Marketing, Sales & Design, IEEE

IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional association, has made a long-term commitment to partner with discovery service vendors, libraries and NISO to improve all aspects of library discovery services and workflows, so as to aid better discoverability and ultimately usage of its content. IEEE is dedicated to developing the architecture, routines and culture for this collaboration, both internally and externally. Internally an eight-member discovery service work group has been formed, to document, analyze, communicate, track and resolve content and metadata issues, and increase the awareness of the importance of metadata management. Externally IEEE is visiting and setting up regular meetings with all major discovery service vendors, to tackle a wide range of discovery-related issue including, but not limited to, indexing, linking, usage tracking, library configurations. IEEE is also auditing library discovery interfaces and developing an infrastructure to help libraries to maximize the discoverability and accessibility of the IEEE content. IEEE is actively participating in NISO’s D2D, ODI and KBART initiatives to develop better guidelines and tools for the community.

2:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Where Do We Go From Here? Assessing the Value and Impact of Discovery Systems
Michael Levine-Clark, Professor / Associate Dean for Scholarly Communication and Collections Services, University of Denver Libraries
Jason S. Price, PhD, Director of Licensing Operations, SCELC Library Consortium

Building on a study of the impact of discovery system implementation on journal usage in academic libraries, this presentation will outline further areas for exploration. While usage change is one important metric for evaluating discovery system impact, there are multiple additional factors that librarians, publishers, and discovery vendors should consider. 

• Which metrics should be used to evaluate discovery system performance? 
• To what extent does discovery system configuration affect these metrics? 
• Do external library e-resource management and linking configuration settings limit the effectiveness of discovery systems?
• Does the impact of discovery systems justify the investment that libraries, publishers, and discovery vendors are making in their development and implementation? 

This session is designed to encourage the development of practical approaches to address these questions through collaboration among the three categories of stakeholder.

3:00 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Afternoon Break

3:15 p.m. - 4:15 p.m.  Roundtable Discussions
Attendees and panelists will participate in table discussions around the themes and issues presented in talks from session panelists and speakers. Input of participants is a critical element to solicit ideas about future NISO and community work. The roundtable discussions are intended to be an "un-conference" self-organization of the participants to discuss their own themes and topics about discovery issues.

4:15 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. Roundtable Reporting
Attendees and panelists will report their suggestions and opportunities for potential work NISO can undertake as presented throughout the themes and issues from session panelists and speakers. 

5:30 p.m. End of Day One

6:00 - 7:00 p.m. End of Day 1: Sponsor Reception - SAGE
Welcoming remarks by: Lettie Conrad, Executive Manager, Product Analysis, SAGE Publications 

Day Two: Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Speakers

Scott Bernier

Senior Vice President, Marketing
EBSCO Information Services

8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast

9:00 a.m. -10:00 a.m. Opening Keynote: From where we are to where we want to be: The future of resource discovery from a UK perspective (On Live-Stream)
Neil Grindley, Head of Resource Discovery, Jisc
 

During the last 12 months, Jisc has undertaken a series of consultation exercises to really drill down into the resource discovery requirements of UK academic libraries to reveal what the future shape of bibliographic data services should look like. One of the drivers for doing this work was to understand what practical and actionable steps should be taken to follow up the National Monograph Strategy Roadmap that Jisc published in 2014. As the title suggests, the focus for this whole phase of work has been what to do about ‘books’ – and specifically the book-length result of academic research.

This presentation will set out the reason why this focus is of importance in the UK currently and will set out the steps that we intend to take over the next 2-3 years to address problems with discovering and accessing materials that are of interest to students and academics. The solutions to these problem require much wider action than simply making current (and increasingly niche) services better. A step-change and a new mode of collaboration is needed for UK libraries to make a more visible and authoritative contribution. Making data flow more freely and ensuring that systems are interoperable will be key actions for Jisc over the next few years, requiring work with a broad range of stakeholders including libraries, library service providers, aggregators, publishers and licensing intermediaries. 

10:00 a.m. - 10:15 a.m. Morning Break

10:15 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Roundtable discussions about the Future of Library Resource Discovery
Chairs of NISO Discovery to Delivery Committee
Lead by select presenters and chairs of the NISO Discovery to Delivery Committee, attendees will engage in Discovery conversations surrounding linked data, multi-media, assessment, privacy, etc.

12:30 p.m. 1:30 p.m. Lunch

12:45 p.m. 1:20 p.m. (Optional) Group Lunch Discussion  
Linked Data Experiences: Stories from Practice, Implementations, and the Libhub Initiative

1:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m. Next Steps and Recommendations for Future Work of NISO's Discovery to Delivery Committee (On Live-Stream)
Scott Bernier, Senior Vice President, Marketing, EBSCO

2015 NISO Forum: The Future of Library Resource Discovery from National Information Standards Organization (NISO)

Areas that comprise discoverability, delivery, and ultimate utilization of library collections are massive in potential scope. What does NISO do with all of the ideas generated during the last two days of this forum? Whether the outcome be a White Paper, Best Practice, or Standard, how do we move from ideas to outcomes? In light of the recent NISO commissioned white paper (authored by M. Breeding), this session will take a refined look at where we are today and the potential directions for the Discovery to Delivery (D2D) Committee. 

2:45 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Afternoon Break

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Closing Presentation: What Do YOU Think the Future of Library Resource Discovery will be? (On Live-Stream)

2015 NISO Forum: The Future of Library Resource Discovery from National Information Standards Organization (NISO)

Peter Murray, Library Technologist and blogger at the Disruptive Library Technology Jester

Over the past two days we have heard a number of ideas and talked about them in roundtable groups and over meals and drinks. Each of us came with preconceived ideas, and have been influenced by these discussions. In this last hour of the NISO Forum on the future of library resource discovery, let's tease out the threads of conversation and see what conclusions we can draw.

4:00 p.m. Meeting Adjourn: Thanks to sponsors and attendees
Todd Carpenter, Executive Director, NISO

Additional Information

  • Early bird rates are offered until September 18, 2015. After that date, regular registration rates apply.
  • Registration closed on Octber 1, 2015. This also applies to any on-site registration.
  • Cancellations made by September 25, 2015 will receive a full refund less a $50 processing fee. After that date, there are no refunds.
  • Registration includes a continental breakfast and lunch for both days. Notify the NISO office if you have any dietary restrictions (301-654-2512).
  • Students should submit proof of enrollment when registering. Please contact the NISO office (301-654-2512) with questions. 

 

Hotel Information
The Mt. Washington Conference Center also offers a 48-room hotel on site, and it is recommended that you make your reservation directly with the hotel as space is limited. Please visit the website here.

Other hotels in the area:
The Radisson at Cross Keys. This hotel is located 1.5 miles from the conference center, and is less than 7 minutes away from the Mt. Washington Conference Center by Light Rail. 

Wyndham Baltimore Mt. Vernon. Also along Baltimore's Light Rail line, this hotel is located in the historic Mt. Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore City.