ResourceBlog Article: University of Michigan: Putting a Librarian's Face on Search

contact us \| suggestion

Receive the weekly sampler of posts and "Resource of the Week".
Subscribe »

My Account »

If you find ResourceShelf useful, please supply a testimonial »

Home > ResourceBlog > Article

« All ResourceBlog Articles

Tuesday, 27th July 2010

University of Michigan: Putting a Librarian's Face on Search

This is a superb idea that's a win-win for both the user and library/librarian. Personal relationships can go a long way that can potentially help the researcher and also help a library gain the credit they likely deserve as a resource (not just a building)) that's ready to help when called upon using one of many communication tools (IM/Virtual Reference, SMS, Skype, e-mail, etc). A personal relationship can also assist a librarian in becoming more proactive in how they work with users.

We realize that this is easier said than done but it's an idea that we think is worth talking about and modifying for each library (based on needs of users and resources the library has available).

Ken Varnum writes on BLT (Blog for Library Technology):

When you do a search on the University of Michigan Library's web site, you get not only results from the catalog, web site, online journal and database collections, and more, you also get a librarian who is a subject specialist related to your search term. While the matching is not perfect, it provides a human face on search results. So, for example, if you search for "Kant," in addition to books and databases, you also get the subject specialist librarians for humanities and philosophy...When we can't make a reliable match to a subject specialist, we provide a link to Ask a Librarian, our reference service.

[Clip: How the Academic Disciplines Work and Where They Come From, Must Read]

In a site search, we do a special query of the library catalog behind the scenes and get the first 100 catalog results (sorted according to the catalog's relevance ranking algorithms). We sort those results into Academic Disciplines. If more than 25 items are in a single Academic Discipline, we include the subject specialist responsible for that particular area. (We set the threshold at 25 matches to help ensure a relevant match, but a librarian specializing in the "wrong" subject is arguably better than no librarian at all.)

We make the call number-to-academic discipline mapping available on our site at http://www.lib.umich.edu/browse/categories/. There is also an XML version of the mapping free for all to use or adapt.

Access the Complete Blog Post

Source: BLT

blog comments powered by Disqus

« All ResourceBlog Articles

FreePint Family

A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »

Latest Family Articles:

Quilting big data threads
Thursday, 24th May 2012

Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.

The fallacy of information overload
Wednesday, 23rd May 2012

A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?

Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure?
Wednesday, 23rd May 2012

Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.

Newsdesk: tracking millions of pieces of information a day
Tuesday, 22nd May 2012

What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?

Alacra Compliance adds managerial oversight
Tuesday, 22nd May 2012

Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).

All Family Articles »
Family Articles by Category »

Tell us what you're working on,
and we'll talk to you about how FreePint can help »

FreePint Family Testimonials

"Fabulous resource to learn of unique tools and insights. Very useful." Manager, Futures and Forecasting, Virginia, USA

More testimonials »

Subscribe to the ResourceShelf Newsletter and receive the weekly sampler of posts and Resource of the Week.

Find out more »

ResourceShelf sponsored by:

Article Categories

Search News (9339)
Source File (9518)
Web 2.0 (2568)

All Article Categories »