PSIgate: “ two clicks away from rich information”

PSIgate: “two clicks away from rich information”

John Blunden-Ellis, USTLG Meeting 17 June 2004

history and policy

chemistry

earth sciences

astronomy

physics

materials

PSIgate - Physical Sciences Information Gateway

• Current Product Development

• Growth and Content

•Usage and Marketplace

• Future Plans


1. Current Product Development

• Regular review of Welcome Page look and feel.

Last updated November 2002.Reviewed on a six-monthly basis.Re-structure for September 2004.



Current Product Development:

•Regular review of Welcome Page look and feel

• Harvesting tool



Current Product Development:

• Regular review of Welcome Page look and feel

• Harvesting tool

• Products and services


Top 50

• Measured by numberof clickthroughs tooriginal resource from catalogue.

• 267,000 clickthroughsin total on PSIgatesince August 2003.

• Most popular site had248 visits in November 2002.


Timelines

• 1,428 lines.

• Single science timelineor separate subjecttimelines.

• Can be searched byword or by date range.

• 12,600 word searchessince August 2003


Newsfeeds

• PSIgate Headlines, Spotlight, PSIgateNewsletter, Jobs and Courses, Newsfeeds.

• Newsfeeds: BBC, Associated Press,New Scientist, IoP, scenta, LTSN Materials, NextWave, Google Science.

• Cross searching planned.


Space Guide

• Topical features on Astronomy.

• Updated with a new feature(s) every six weeks or so.

• All features linked to the Catalogue through relevant links.

• First feature on Constellationswith a star map of eachconstellation.

• Next feature will be Saturn.


A-Z listing of Browse Headings

• Originally listed by subject and mainHeading.

• Now additional choice of full alphabeticListing.


Current Product Development •Regular review of Welcome Page look and feel

• Harvesting tool


• Presentation of search results and added Google-like functionality



Current Product Development


• Harvesting tool



• Links to other services


ETB

• Engineering &Technology Board.

• ETB have adoptedMany browse headingsFrom PSIgate.

• Link to PSIgateCatalogue.

• Use articles from Spotlight.


IoP

• PSIgate pioneeredarrangement with IoPP.

• Remote searching allabstracts of IoPP journal articles(over 150,000).

• Cross searching withPSIgate and Zetoc setup but results unhelpful.

• Access to full article ifuser institution subscribes.


RSChem

• Agreement withRSC to provide remotesearching of abstracts of journal articles Published by RSC.

• RSC LIC useful forimages relating toChemistry history(2,000 digitised).


Current Product Development


• Harvesting tool



• Links to other services

• Spotlight redesign



2. Growth and Content

Main catalogue

11,100 resource descriptions (June 2004) in the main catalogue:

High granularity. Tutorials/Lecture Notes/Case Studies….1,200 tutorials; 1,350 lecture notes; 172 laboratory practicals

Web catalogue (harvester)

122,000 resources in the harvested catalogue


Growth and Content

Content breakdown of main catalogue by subject area:

ASTRONOMY: 1,796CHEMISTRY: 3,612EARTH SCIENCES: 3,119PHYSICS: 3,107SCIENCE HISTORY & POLICY: 1,000


3. Usage and Market Place

• Global usage of PSIgate.Usage model:

Subject keyword searches + subject browse searches + searches of static pages. Per MonthPage views. Per Month

• Size of ac.uk marketplace and PSIgate usage

within that marketplace.Usage model:

Subject keyword searches + subject browse searches + Searches of static pages + % of unresolved host/location. Per Month Page views. Per Month


196,000 keyword searches

Keyword searches by sector. Aug03-May04 (10 months)

26%

10%

2%

3%26%

33%

unkn

.ac.uk

other.uk

.edu

.com

other


Search Trends Aug03 - May04

02000400060008000

100001200014000

Unknown

.ac.uk

.co.uk

Other.uk

.edu

.com

Other


Top 10 institutional users of PSIgateAugust 2003 – May 2004 (10 months)

InstitutionNumber of

searches

Bath 3,443

Manchester 3,240

Cambridge 2,786

Dundee 2,460

UMIST 1,833

Oxford 1,570

Bristol 1,510

Imperial 1,230

Nottingham 1,202

Kingston 1,145


PSIgateSize of ac.uk market sector in physical sciences

SUBJECT STUDENTS STAFF TOTALChemistry/Materials/Ceramics 20,330 3,865 24,195Physics/Astronomy 14,100 3,960 18,060Earth/Marine/Environmental Science 29,340 3,100 32,440Other 1,355 115 1,470

TOTAL: 65,125 11,050 76,175

Source: HESA

Number of PSIgate searches from ac.uk origin for 2003-4: 72,000


PSIgate User Survey

What sort of information are you looking for?

35%

23%3%

11%

24%

4%

Answer a question

Tutorials/Lectures

Jobs/Courses

News

Project topics

Other


4. Future Plans

Two major projects for 2004-5:• eBank in partnership with UKOLN and the University

of Southampton• Database of Current Research Interests in Chemistry

in partnership with the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge University

And

Outcomes of six-monthly team Brainstorming meeting


eBank (1)

• Subject area: chemistry (crystallography).• Based on the perception that research and learning processes are cyclical. Outputs are based on the use and re-use of data and information.• Example: student might wish to ‘rollback’ to the original research data on which a publication was based. This underpins the concept of provenance.• Therefore, eBank project wishes to link publications and the datasets to which the publications refer, giving users access to the datasets.


eBank (2)

• Draw on experimental work undertaken for the Combechem project (combinatorial chemistry) where large quantities of varied data are generated.• Comparing/testing metadata schemas for chemistry datasets (e.g. CLRC Scientific Metadata Model).• Demonstrator currently in preparation. Harvesting metadata about eprints, and harvesting metadata about research data. These will be brought together.• Demonstrator database made available via PSIgate September/October 2004.• Valuable learning/teaching and research tool.


Database of Current Research Interests in Chemistry (1)

• Pilot study at PSIgate (MSc project).• Create an exemplar database of research interests harvested from departmental websites.• Each record based on individual.• Metadata: author, institution, departmental details, stated research interests/publications, controlled keywords, uncontrolled keywords, webpage date, record creation date.• Code written (Java) that will automatically extract data from all UK chemistry websites and re-present in database form.


Database of Current Research Interests in Chemistry (2)

• Automatic database creation.• Testing and refining code, based on experimental work undertaken at Department of Chemistry at Cambridge (Chemical Informatics Group: Chemical Data Checker, etc).• Promote to ac.uk chemistry community, with protocols for easy amending of webpages.• Database automatically updated weekly.• Extend model to global listing.• Possible application to other disciplines in physical sciences.


Brainstorming – some plans for 2004-5

• 57 separate action lines.• Events database for PSIgate.• Separate packaged features: Case studies; Tutorials, etc. based on PSIgate’s high granularity.• Redesign Welcome Pages.• Focus on IRC growth/quality/specificity through a number ofidentified initiatives.• Revamp browse headings, with pop-up scope notes.• etc.

PSIgate: “two clicks away from rich information”

John Blunden-Ellis. USTLG meeting 17 June 2004

history and policy

chemistry

earth sciences

astronomy

physics

materials

Documents

PSIgate: “ two clicks away from rich information”