Official Description:

Discovery Tools: Replanting the Tree of Knowledge

Jill O'Neill, Director of Planning and Communication, NFAIS, Moderator
Reverend AKM Adam, Professor of New Testament, Seabury Theological Seminary
Robert Hanisch, Project Manager, US Virtual Observatory, Space Telescope Science Institute
Amanda Spiteri, Product Marketing Director, Elsevier

The current digital information landscape provides more avenues to content than ever before: distributed and federated data, sophisticated human and machine search, specialized portals, wikis, and blogs. How are traditional and new indexing services blended to maximize discovery? How are researchers and educators navigating disciplinary and geographic boundaries? What is the yield of increased interactivity, in research labs, classrooms, hospitals, field work - any location? Are content creator and content user expectations matching up along the way? Where are publishers breaking new ground? What do users envision for the future? This panel discussion will encompass the entire spectrum of discovery in scholarship in today's digital environment.

My Not-Quite-Live Blogging Notes (compiled in a joint initiative between me at the podium and Judy Luther of Informed Strategies in the back of the room...Collaborative effort!):

The intent behind this panel was to spotlight the various channels available to users in the current networked environment -- they have the highly functional traditional indexing services (such as Scopus from Elsevier), the portals developed by communities of practice such as the Virtual Observatory that Bob Hanisch will be discussing, and the view from an educator and researcher in the humanities, specifically theology, where available tools are more limited.

Amanda Spiteri (Director Product Marketing Elsevier)

Amanda briefly delineates the profile of an average user of Scopus (36-45 year old researcher w/ variety of pressures and responsibilities in terms of productivity of research, teaching, and mentoring/advising undergrads and grad students. They are faced literally with a plethora of potential resources full of electronic full text (logos pop up for most of the significant providers). How does the researcher maneuver in this context and perhaps more immediately of concern to the audience, how do the libraries themselves direct users to appropriate resources. Increasingly complex automation to build and sustain. Note as well that users rarely move past the first two pages of results.

Quotes Charlie Mingus -- "Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity!"

NOTE: That's the real issue. Our systems are still far too complex. Not too complex to understand if users were willing to work at it a bit but they aren't and we have to re-create the situation. AKMA echoes later on the same difficulty with interfaces! You can have complex arcane systems or the alternative of Google regurgitating oceans of mixed relevant and irrelevant stuff.

One interesting note from my perspective. She shows the volume of referrals to Elsevier content from a variety of sites which are in this order (1) Elsevier customer sites (2) PubMed (3) other ELS sites such as Cellpress.com (4) Crossref and in fifth place (5) the search engine referrals including Google. She does say that's a growth area but still not as big as folks might think.

She presents some of the functionality of Scopus to the audience. Recently Elsevier announced the availability of additional source materials indexed through Scirus (content housed in institutional repositories). They're making this additional material available to existing customers w/ Scopus at no additional cost. Tabs can be customized to reflect the institution's branding of the content. They've added RSS to the tool, but admit this is only the first step and they expect to go further.

WHere will Web 2.0 take them? Unclear but she references Connotea, Zotero, folksonomies, social software, etc. -- ELS appears at least to be aware of what's going on out there in the marketplace which may mean that they will implement into their services once they can prove the value of the mechanisms for the demographic they serve.

Robert Hanisch, US Virtual Observatory

Astronomy is one of the first disciplines to pioneer epublishing. Underlying data links to ejournals through a system of persistent identifiers. These services point to each other.

Data deluge – the virtual observatory is about data discovery, access and integration and combing data with computational services. Metadata and interoperability are the key words.

Virtual Observatory (VO) in Astronomy includes basic data, simulations, analysis and interpretation and name resolution services. Note that these aren't discoverable via standard text-based search tools. Name resolution services in this field are particularly of interest or concern given that naming conventions across the discipline are varied. The tool they've developed uses a unique position in the sky rather than a multitude of terms. The VO is a mediator that knows which archive is appropriate and where to route a query. This is a portal that provides access to all the resources located in different areas.

The new understanding is through data integration which uses metadata standards to support discovery with distributed applications, web services and distributed storage with authentication and authorization.

There is a data preservation problem as images are stored but not the underlying data sets. He says ".jpg and .tif formats are not a good basis for deeper research in this field." (expresses exasperation w/ available tools) To correct it they want to integrate digital data management into the publication process (data capture, review metadata tagging and validation, storage). Note that there's a pilot program for publishers to participate in this process.

Digital data discovery and access is essential for the research community.

Reverend Adam (AKMA), Seabury Theological Seminary

What’s available in the humanities – or the lack thereof – is depressing in contrast to the STM arena. Database discovery falls into 2 categories: unfriendly (one-size-fits-none) database interfaces or Google. The user community in theology is at a distinct disadvantage.

Twin issues of ease of use and delivering full capabilities even if they might disrupt established business models. There is a tidal wave of users depending on e-first and scholarly publishers must prepare for this change by changing their approach to publishing.

He stresses w/ a certain amt of vehemence that publishers need to move towards capturing content that is not considered traditional (audio, video representations, things that don't "parse neatly". More vehemence regarding expectations of ease of use, fine grained search, (missed one item) and durable archiving. He suggests that we learn how to derive micro-profits in a mega-use world. Deal with copyright issues and concerns (this comes up on the Friday segment). "Publishers should do it in the face of our retrograde tendencies!"

(Note: I speak w/ him before he leaves and he assures me he'll be blogging about what he's heard here today! Ought to be VERY interesting to see what he took away from this event.)

Question for this segment had to do with browsing and serendipity and loss thereof in an electronic environment. Panelists all agree that this is an issue. Bob points out that browsing as an activity is getting harder and harder to do and research is tending to "stove-pipe". This is an issue certainly.

At the cocktail reception that closes out the day, I'm chatting w/ someone who reiterates the gap between humanities and STM (not just w/ regard to discovery tools but with all kinds of full text as well). This is such a significant issue. Requires that we do SOMETHING about it.