Providing services and tools to maximise discovery of institutions’ digital collections

Spotlight on the Digital

Etienne

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

The Spotlight project found that digitised collections are like a treasure chest at the bottom of the sea: it’s there but not many people can find it.

A treasure chest at the bottom of the sea

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

3

Survey of Academics 2012, Ithaka S+R, Jisc, RLUK, p21 http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5209/1/UK_Survey_of_Academics_2012_FINAL.pdf

Spotlight literature review of discovery behaviours http://bit.ly/Spotlight_behaviours/

Surfacing the treasure chest

Personal recommendations

Databases, library catalogues

Survey of Academics 2012- ~ 40% …. begin their research

processes at a general purpose search engine on the internet or world wide web

- ~ one-third … begin their research at a specific electronic research resource

- ~ less than 15% … start with an online library catalogue or a national or international catalogue or database

- only a very few (2%) reported starting their research with a visit to the library building

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

“Some collections become lost to the web over time (40 out of 217 tested, representing over £2m public investment). Explanations range from poor exposure to search engines, to the loss of web access to the content itself, to relocation elsewhere (within other local collections or aggregation services).”

“While content is typically digitised under the umbrella of a collection, such groupings are not directly relevant to user behaviours, where users require discrete items to be discoverable (almost 50% of items were not discoverable on Google search results by item name or title).”

Collection Level

Item Level

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5569/1/JISC_REPORT_spotlight_on_digital_WEB.pdf

Solutions

1. Institutional capacity building

2. Role of aggregations

3. Technology foresight group

4. Reliable reference service

5. Reusable software tools

6. Strategic content promotion

7. Open content licensing

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Spotlight on the digital – Phase 2Providing services and tools to maximise discovery of institutions’ digital

collections over time

1: Provide national training and advice services to support discoverability good practice ~ Jisc Digital Media

2: Develop tools to facilitate discoverability of digital collections ~ Jisc services and external stakeholders

3: Optimise Jisc resource discovery services to increase visibility of digital collections ~ Copac, Archives Hub

4 Provide horizon scanning on rapidly changing technology in resource discovery ~ Jisc discovery services , Jisc Digital Media, external stakeholders

Audience: librarians, information professionals, archivists, e-resource managers, academics responsible for creation and management of digital collections

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Make your digital resources easier to discover

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/make-your-digital-resources-easier-to-discover

Spotlight on the Digital Phase 2 8

Targeting advice and training to user needs

Improve the user

experience

Use social media

Make your collection available

for learning

and teaching

Learn to use

content aggregator

s

Integrate with your

organisation’s

systems

Make google

searches work for

you

Using popular websites to reach broader

audiences

Create collection

champions

Reach academic researcher

s

Spotlight on the Digital Phase 2 9

Targeting advice and training to user needs

Skills

Knowledge

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Knowledge and skills by topic

Web

dev

elop

men

t skil

ls

Subjec

t mat

ter o

r cur

ation

expe

rienc

e

Mar

ketin

g, a

udienc

e se

gnm

enta

tion

or a

dver

tising

Compu

ter p

rogr

amm

ing,

incl

APIs

Licen

sing

and

right

s

SEO sk

ills

Useab

ility an

d us

er te

sting

Catalog

uing

and

met

adat

a

Socia

l med

ia m

anag

emen

t

Comm

unity

man

agem

ent

Citatio

n an

d re

fere

nce

style

s

Pegd

agog

y an

d cu

rricu

lum

plann

ing

0

4

8

12

16

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

 

£ Occasional

£ Continuous

££ Occasional

££ Continuous

£££ Occasional

£££ Continuous

££££ Occasional

££££ Continuous

£££££ Occasional

£££££ Continuous

Structure your URLs         £££          Understand relevancy ranking           £££        Get your page titles correct     ££              Get your page descriptions correct     ££              Use sitemaps effectively         £££*          Help search engines index your content     ££              Use 'alt' texts to describe images     ££              Add structured metadata to your pages using schema.org             ££££      Create clear, simple item descriptions       ££            Remove registration or authentication barriers for your audiences     ££              Structure your page with good heading tags     ££              Keep your search engine optimisation (SEO) knowledge up to date £                  Identify and use popular web services       ££            Use hashtags effectively   £                Develop your own social network presence       ££            Use crowdsourcing to engage users               ££££    Create a twitter bot to regularly tweet collection items or links     ££              Make it easy for others to share your content £                  Creating engaging blog posts       ££            License your content correctly to enable suitable reuse     ££              Find aggregated catalogues your audiences use     ££              Make use of established cataloguing standards           £££        Use common data formats for metadata         £££          

Publish metadata describing digitised resources under an extremely permissive license such as CC0     ££              The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting         £££          Get your resources listed on library discovery indexes         £££          Improve processes for exporting content     ££              Make use of Wikimedia Commons         £££          Create resource packages for teachers             ££££      Provide API’s to enhance access to your collection               ££££    Collaborate with the users of your collection           £££        Work with suitable partners           £££        Target websites and services your audience use       ££            Host a wikipedia edit-a-thon     ££              Carry out regular user testing           £££        Get the best from your web analytics           £££        Know your audience, speak to them         £££          Learn to use log files           £££        Provide clear guidance on citing your content                 £££££  Ensure your systems work with reference management software (e.g. Zotero)                 £££££  Give your internal staff clear roles                   £££££

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Using social media – a case study

Identify and use popular web servicesDevelop your

own social network presence

Use crowdsourcing to engage

users

Use hashtags

effectively

Create a twitter

bot

Make it easy for others to share your

content

Create engaging blog posts

Actions

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Identify and use popular web services

Republishing content to popular web services, such as flickr or youtube, can help you reach a wider audience.

Consider the size and nature of your audience

The suitability of the platform for your content

Right and licensing supported by the service

Rights and licensing issues surrounding your content

Skills

Programming skills

Expertise in the subject matter or curation experience

Knowledge of rights and licensing

££ - continuous investment required

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Develop your own social network presence

Create a presence for your digital collection on a social network site such as Facebook or Twitter.

Pick a network that helps you reach the right population and demographics for your collection

Skills

Expertise of social media management

Rights and licensing of content on sites such as facebook

Rights and licensing supported by the service

££ - continuous investment required

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Use crowdsourcing to engage users

Crowdsourcing means to gather contributions from a large community in order to achieve a particular goal. While the primary goal of crowdsourcing activities might not be to increase visibility of a collection, this is a common side-effect.

Building a crowdsourcing platform from scratch could be a significant undertaking, however many existing platforms are available that you might find are suitable. Examples include Zooniverse and HistoryPin

Skills

Expertise of community management

Expertise in the subject matter or curation experience££££ - continuous

investment required

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Use hashtags effectively

Hashtags are used to identify postings on social media related to particular subjects.

Establishing a hashtag for a collection can help track conversations about your collection across social networks

It can draw together all of your social media activities, beyond its use on twitter

And empower users to contribute to the conversation by using the hashtag

Skills

Expertise of social media management

£ - continuous investment required

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Create a twitter bot to regularly tweet collection items or links

A ‘Twitter bot’ is a piece of software that posts to twitter automatically.

There are a large number of different types of Twitter bots - some simply post information, while others respond in some way to prompts (usually tweets from other users).

Regularly posting to Twitter can help promote your digital collection (through Twitter followers and Retweets by Twitter users)

And expose aspects of the collection that might otherwise go unseen

Skills

Expertise in the subject matter or curation experience

Programming skills

Experience of working with APIs

Knowledge of rights and licensing

££ - occasional investment required

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Make it easy for others to share your content

The easier you make it for others to share or ‘like’ your digital collection, the more you’ll increase its discoverability.

Include a ‘share’ buttons for the most popular social networks

Consider what platforms are most suited to your content - Pinterest for images for example

Consider adding a citation function

Skills

Expertise of web development

£ - Occasional investment required

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Create engaging blog posts

Blogs gives you space to explore items in your collection in more detail for users.

A blog post can be used to highlight a particular element of your collection, adding opinion, contextual information or other engaging content

To publicise a collection or a theme within a collection

Skills

Expertise in the subject matter or curation experience

££ - Continuous investment required

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Next steps

Developing a tool to promote item level discoverability

Enhance online guide

National Training

Jisc will offer Discovery scholarships to a small number of institutions to help shape the training offer.Jisc will• Award £5000 per participating institution • Provide training, guidance and advice to institutions

on how to maximise discovery of their resources

Institutions will:• Work with Jisc on piloting the training offer• Provide input into the curriculum and delivery of the

training• Produce a case study at the end of the pilotKeep an eye on the Jisc content blog http://bit.ly/1FbcCap

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

Thank you

Karen Colbron, Jisc

Digital content manager

karen.colbron@jisc.ac.uk @karencolbron

#spotlight2

Spotlight on the Digital #spotlight2

CreditsComputer cables Etienne

Treasure chest Tom Pralson

Improving discoverability of digitised collections

Weighing scales Spello

Piggybank 401(K) 2014

Help button Eva the weaver