Staff Papers
Building better public access into the LibriVision OPAC
By Peter McBride, IBM Business Consulting Services, and Roxanne Missingham, National Library of Australia. A technical briefing paper presented to the 24 th Annual Meeting of the AMICUS/Dobis-Libis User Group Budapest, Hungary, 7th to 9th September 2005
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Abstract
This paper reports on developments at National Library of Australia to enable end users to more easily access information on material held in Australian libraries.
The National Library of Australia has provided online access to the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD) since 1981. Containing the National Union Catalogue for Australia , its major role initially was to support shared cataloguing. The Kinetica service now supports access to the database through its search service.
Since 1999 the Kinetica service has been underpinned by the AMICUS and LibriVision software, with IBM Business Consulting Services acting as systems integrator.
This paper details local customisations applied to the AMICUS and LibriVision applications at the National Library that facilitate access to the National Union Catalogue for the increasing numbers of non-librarian users of the Kinetica service.
Modifications to the LibriVision Advanced Search screen, coupled with the AMICUS Collections functionality, allow users without library expertise to better target their searches. They are able to easily limit their queries to particular types of publications, for example Theses, Conference Publications, Newspapers or Electronic Publications.
Autobiographical notes:
Peter McBride is the Project Manager for the IBM Business Consulting Services’ NLA Kinetica Systems Integration Services project.
Roxanne Missingham is Assistant Director General, Resource Sharing, National Library of Australia and has had a long career in libraries and IT focused on the development of digital delivery and digital services. She has been a library educator, library manager and researcher
Background
Australia has a long tradition of cooperation between libraries. The national network of libraries has been strongly supported by the National Library of Australia for many decades. Ours is a large country, with a network of public, state, university, research and special libraries spread across 7.7 million square kilometres. Libraries in Australia have a strong history of cooperation, built on the recognition that the national collection would inevitably be distributed with a range of strengths in libraries across the nation.
Libraries in Australia have rich and diverse collections. There are approximately 4,850 [1] libraries in Australia (not including primary and secondary school libraries). These libraries have built significant collections over the past two hundred years and have a stock of approximately 75 million volumes [2]. The collections are in high demand with around 193 million loans per year [3], or approximately 9.65 loans per Australian per year.
A key service provided by the National Library of Australia to support the Australian library network is the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD), which includes the National Union Catalogue. The service, released online as the Australian Bibliographic Network in 1981, was originally designed primarily to support shared cataloguing.
It provided Australian libraries with the ability to increase copy cataloguing, resulting in greater efficiencies in technical services. The service was also used for acquisition purposes, for reference enquiries to identify relevant resources and by interlibrary loan staff to identify material held by other libraries.
The Kinetica service was launched in 1999, replacing the Australian Bibliographic Network, providing access to the ANDB and a range of international union catalogues. It supports the following activities of Australian libraries:
- cooperative cataloguing, enabling Australian libraries to reduce the costs of their cataloguing by using records created by others;
- support for interlending, allowing Libraries to share resources by borrowing (or receiving copies) of library materials;
- support for cooperative collection development, enabling libraries to reduce the amount of duplication in their collections; and
- access to the collections of Australian libraries for individual researchers, enabling identification of relevant material in Australian libraries and online.
The service operates on a cost recovery basis with libraries paying for access through charges for searches. The business model and operation of the service is very similar to that of OCLC’s WorldCat. Libraries around the world can join the Kinetica service and pay for searches. In addition, individual researchers can purchase blocks of searches.
The Kinetica service also extends the ability of Australian libraries to use international union catalogues for resource sharing and cataloguing. Kinetica provides searching of databases such as the RLG Union Catalog, OCLC’s WorldCat and the National Union catalogues of New Zealand and Singapore . It also enables libraries to order materials from suppliers such as CISTI and Infotrieve.
The Kinetica service comprises:
- a search service, now entitled Libraries Australia;
- a cataloguing module, the Kinetica Cataloguing Client, web holdings and a web input form; and
- an interlibrary lending service – Kinetica Document Delivery Service and Payment System.
From 1999 the ANBD and Kinetica Cataloguing Client have been based upon the AMICUS Server and AMICUS Professional Workstation products respectively. The search service uses the LibriVision OPAC, and IBM has built web-based holdings input and simple web-based cataloguing capabilities that complement the LibriVision software.
The Challenge
The Kinetica service is an essential part of the Library’s strategic aim to:
provide rapid and easy access to the wealth of information that reside in libraries and other cultural institutions – and to break down the barriers that work against this
National Library of Australia , Directions 2003-2005
The Kinetica service is utilised by approximately 1100 libraries. While the service initially focused on supporting shared cataloguing, the service has evolved to be critical to end users in libraries and library staff to support all aspects of resource sharing.
With more than 39 million holdings statements, and more than 14 million bibliographic records, itforms an essential tool for Australian libraries in all sectors – public, special, academic, technical and further education, health, corporate, law, state and national. Around 6.5 million searches were undertaken on the service in 2003/04.
In this context it became clear to the Library that the service’s major search interface, the LibriVision OPAC in its “out-of-the-box” form, represented a significant barrier to access for many users such as academic researchers, students and public library customers.
Without detailed technical knowledge of cataloguing and library protocols, non-librarians are unable to easily perform refined searches. Not only do these users need to refer to online help to build a sophisticated search strategy; once they have done so the resulting query is likely to have an unsatisfactory response time on such a large database.
For example, my son is destined to be a star Australian Football player provided he can make some slight improvements in his kicking technique and attack on the ball. I decide that some expert instruction in football skills would develop his game and visit my local public library to find a suitable resource.
A video publication would be ideal in this case as at the age of one he is more likely to respond to a visual demonstration of good football. I search the library’s local catalogue. There is nothing. My next step is to search the National Union Catalogue via Kinetica to identify and locate a suitable item, then ask the library to arrange an inter-library loan.
At first I try the Simple Search screen.

But a broad search on such a large database can only inform that many, many records match the query.

My next step is to ask a junior librarian for assistance in using the Advanced Search screen, who helps me to refine the search term with a second text parameter, and limit the result set by material type.

After waiting for slightly more than a minute I have some results. However I’ll need to scroll through more than one hundred records to find what I’m looking for.

So I approach the senior librarian, who happens to be the local expert on MARC code fields and Z3950 indexes. With their help I construct a search in the Expert Search screen for the precise type of record I need, namely video material produced in Australia that has children as its target audience and contains the keywords “skills” and “football”.

This time I have the result I was looking for, although the result takes more than four minutes to return.

The Solution
I may not always have a helpful librarian or two at hand when I want to use Kinetica, and may also have been discouraged by the response times involved in the more complex searches. I imagine how much easier my task would be if I were able to limit my search with some simple checkboxes, as per:

Thus the National Library requested that IBM implement their product development strategy to facilitate searching on the National Bibliographic Database by end users, by:
- Enabling searches to be limited in ways currently not supported by the current indexes; and
- Rendering existing options for searching more visible, and thereby more accessible.
The requirement was for a series of checkboxes on the Advanced Search screen that allow searching for records in one or more of the following categories.
Record category |
Z3950 indexes and codes |
|---|---|
Australian publication |
CCI = 1 |
Government publication |
GOV = a, c, f, i, l, m, o, s, or z |
Conference publication |
CNF = 1 |
Publication for young people |
BKA OR VMI = a, b, c, d, or j |
Thesis |
NAT = m |
Electronic publication |
FRM = s OR TW = electronic resource OR MARC tag 856 is present |
Books |
MAT = a AND BIB = a, c, d, or m OR MAT = t |
Journals |
MAT = a AND BIB = b or s AND SEY <> n |
Newspapers |
MAT = a AND BIB = b or s AND SEY = n |
Maps |
MAT = e or f |
Pictures |
MAT = k |
Film / Video |
MAT = g AND VMM = m or v |
The most efficient way to implement this requirement was to leverage the existing Collections functionality within AMICUS. Each category of record was defined in the Collections Code Table t_clctn and an SQL script was developed to refresh the Collections Access Point table t_clctn_acs_pnt on a daily basis, thereby ensuring currency of the collections.
Checkboxes were created on the LibriVision Advanced Search form; each with a Use value of CTN, the Z3950 index defined within LibriVision and the AMICUS Search Engine for Collections. The term values were defined as the AMICUS Collection identifier corresponding to the checkbox label.
For example, the Pictures collection is defined in the AMICUS Collections Code Table with collection number 20, and the Use/Term values for the Pictures checkbox in the LibriVision are CTN/20.
The breakdown of the Australian National Bibliographic Database by AMICUS Collection is as per:
Collection name |
records |
|---|---|
Books |
11,324,460 |
Australian content |
2,330,872 |
Government Publications |
1,228,068 |
Journals |
1,098,048 |
Electronic Publications |
858,978 |
Children’s Publications |
521,182 |
Conference Publications |
328,344 |
Theses |
259,458 |
Film / Video |
232,367 |
Pictures |
173,228 |
Maps |
165,200 |
Newspapers |
123,703 |
Due to the indexing structure within the AMICUS database, Search Engine response times where the Collections Access Point table is utilised are superior to those where the equivalent code combinations are utilised. In our example search, the results are returned within 30 seconds, compared with more than four minutes for the same search undertaken using Expert Search.

So without expert librarian knowledge I am able to quickly retrieve the material I require to assure my son’s future sporting career.

Conclusion
The development of an interface for the Kinetica service which is more user focused and simple has been a success. Since implementation in February 2004, checkboxes for searching on material type and format have provided librarians and library users with significantly improved access to resources held in Australian libraries. The solution has enabled more efficient searching by users, particularly with regards to the surfacing of specialised resources such as theses, via an interface which better meets the needs of library end users. A number of libraries were confident to extend access to the search service to their customers, particularly in the higher education community, because of the new interface.
In 2005 the National Library took a broader approach to meeting the needs of users and librarians. Through the Kinetica Redevelopment Project, the Library developed a new interface which builds upon the success of the development outlined in this paper and also a Google style interface which was first tested through a pilot project with public libraries in 2004, Information Australia. For more details of this project and related research see Missingham, R., Wilson, F., Smith, J. (2005) Evaluating the public library portal, a paper presented to the Information Online 2005 conference in Sydney, http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2005/missingham1.html. This new interface, Libraries Australia, was launched on 8th December 2004 .
In summary, the collaboration between IBM and the National Library of Australia in the enhancement of the LibriVision software has resulted in a significantly improved service. The development was an important step in fulfilling the National Library's goal of providing rapid and easy access to the wealth of information that reside in libraries and other cultural institutions.
Footnotes
- Sources: Australian Libraries Gateway http://www.nla.gov.au/libraries/; Council of Australian University Librarians Statistics; Australian Bureau of Statistics (2001) Public Libraries, Australia
- Sources: Council of Australian University Librarians statistics http://www.caul.edu.au/stats/; Australian Bureau of Statistics (2001) Public Libraries, Australia , ABS catalogue no. 8561.0. Canberra : ABS, 2001; - Missingham and Walls; Australian National Bibliographic Database
- Sources: Australian public libraries statistical report 2000-01; Council of Australian University Librarians statistics


