Does MetaLib Have a Future?

One Consortium’s Experience with MetaLib Post-Primo Implementation

Maureen Olle-LaJoie

Head of Library Systems and Technology, UW-River Falls

September 16, 2014

University of Wisconsin-River Falls

• Comprehensive campus• 6,000 students• First generation college students

University of Wisconsin System

• 182,000 students• 2 Doctoral research universities• 11 Comprehensive universities• UW Colleges consisting of 13 2-year campuses

Council of University of Wisconsin Libraries (CUWL)

• The forum for library and information technology planning for UW System

• One System, One Library

MetaLib and the UW System

• “Provide a variety of research and searching tools to allow online catalog or web access to the breadth of digital information and identification of the broad array of locally owned paper and multimedia resources.”– CUWL Strategic Direction, 2003

MetaLib Timeline

• Spring 2003: Request for proposals issued for federated search and cross-linking software

• November 2003: MetaLib and SFX selected• January 2004: Contracts issued• May 2004: MetaLib implementation kick off meeting• Fall 2007: MetaLib fully implemented at UW-River

Falls

Federated Search

• Standardized user interface to the institution’s collection of resources

• Searching of resources via a variety of protocols (Z39.50, HTTP, XML)

• Group resources into categories and subcategories relevant to users

• Resources can reside in multiple categories and subcategories

• A-Z List of Resources that is searchable and browseable

…Federated Search

• View results by resource or in a merged list• Link to the native interface• Save search results in a personal folder• Pre-select favorite resources• E-mail results• Set up alerts for weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc., and

have results delivered via e-mail

MetaLib Implementation

• Expected to take 3 months to implement post-training

• SFX was implemented first• Consistency discussed in Fall 2005 and 2006• Assessment of MetaLib conducted in 2008• Xerxes implemented at several campuses in 2010

MetaLib Adpotion Across the UW System4 Campuses did not implement MetaLib

– Librarians did not like how it worked– Too much upkeep– Lacked local technology expertise to implement.

Whole value proposition didn't make sense for us.– Preferred both back- and front-end of Serials Solutions

over Metalib. SS was easier to implement given tech staffing at the time.

MetaLib Adoption Across the UW System10 Campuses Implemented:

– Find Databases: 10– QuickSets: 8– MetaSearch: 9 – e-shelf: 5– Xerxes: 5

Resource Discovery

• “UW-System Libraries want to purchase a resource discovery product that is built on an open architecture that can ingest all of our bibliographic data and digital collection metadata into a single index that also includes a massive amount of article level data.”– CUWL Fall 2010

Primo Implementation Timeline

• Primo purchased June 2012• Implementation kickoff Fall 2012• Implemented Primo Central Index January 2013• Fully implemented with bibliographic data August

2013

Post-Primo MetaLib Decisions

• 7 campuses dropped MetaLib by January 2014• 1 campus dropped MetaLib in June 2014• 2 campuses are considering replacing MetaLib

Reasons for Dropping MetaLib

• Cost. Primo Central Index is an inexpensive alternative.

• Users were not using the metasearching much.• The searches of Primo Central Index content were

perceived to be faster than metasearching.• MetaLib became redundant

Reasons for Dropping MetaLib

• Metasearching was always a fairly unattractive compromise and it's performance was a joke in a Google world

• Primo as an improvement over Quicksearch and developed our LibGuides A-Z as a gateway to the native interfaces.

• Only the database list was really used in the last year that we had Metalib

2011 2012 2013 20140

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QuickSet Searches

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QuickSet Searches by Month

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MetaLib Registered Users

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MetaLib Registered Users By Month

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Links to Native Interface

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Resource Categories/Resource Locator Usage

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Use of MetaLib in Primo

2013 2014

Does MetaLib Have a Future?

• Within the UW System all but 2 campuses stopped using MetaLib less than a year after Primo implementation

• Remaining 2 campuses will probably make decisions by July 2015

• If the UW System is any indication, MetaLib’s future is bleak