While knowledgebases have become essential tools for electronic resources management, little research has been done about how practitioners have integrated them into their everyday workflows. Inspired by a partnership with the GOKb project, which aims to build an open source knowledgebase, librarians at North Carolina State University set out to investigate the practical requirements, areas of improvement, and desired enhancements that librarians have for their knowledgebases. During this program, the presenters will describe the results of a survey about knowledgebase use sent to electronic resources managers across the country. The survey results will be supplemented by individual points of view gathered from in-depth interviews with selected respondents.The program will conclude with a look at how the findings of the investigation can be applied to the GOKb project. At the end of the session, the attendee should walk away with an understanding of trends in knowledgebase management, areas where the greatest improvement is needed, and ideas for enhancing knowledgebase functionality in an open source setting. Maria Collins Head of Acquisitions and Discovery, North Carolina State University Maria Collins is the head of Acquisitions and Discovery at North Carolina State University Libraries. The Acquisitions & Discovery department was formed through the merger of acquisitions and cataloging in June 2012. Her other positions held at NCSU since 2005 include serials librarian, associate head of Acquisitions and the head of Content Acquisitions and Licensing. She previously worked as serials librarian and serials coordinator at Mississippi State University Libraries. Maria is editor of Serials Review and was the column editor for SR's Electronic Journal Forum. She also chairs the team developing NCSU's locally developed electronic resource management system, E-Matrix, and participates in the Kuali OLE and Global Open KnowledgeBase (GOKb) projects. Katherine Hill North Carolina State University Katherine Hill is a library fellow in Acquisitions and Discovery, at North Carolina State University Libraries. In that role, she has been involved in planning and designing the open source knowledge base GOKb as well as e-acquisitions workflows for the open source ILS, Kuali OLE.

1. Building a Better Knowledgebase: A
Community Perspective
Kate Hill, NCSU Libraries Fellow
Maria Collins, Head of Acquisitions & Discovery
North Carolina State University Libraries

2. Or Joining the Goat Rodeo!

3. Outline of Talk
• Introduction and Context for Survey: GOKb
• Methodology
• Where KBs stand now
• KBs and the Future: Movement in the KB space
• Take-aways

4. Why?
• Build a picture of the current methods of KB
management
• Understand the mindset of the Goat Herder (ER
Librarians)
• Learn improved ways of Community
Wrangling/Building

5. Rounding up the Herd: Data Gathering
• Make up:
– 19 questions, multiple choice/open answer
– Three categories
• Targeted listservs and librarians who care about KBs
• Interviewed five volunteers

6. The goats who came back: Data analysis
• 64 Respondents
• Coding, Categorizing, and Graphing.
• Questions for interviews to further elucidate findings

7. How many goats do we need anyway:
Defining a KB

9. The keyword is Comprehensive

10. “Include Streaming Media and Other
Non-Book, Non-Journal E-Resources”
• Streaming Media/ Digital music and scores
• IR/locally hosted content
• Data sets
• Standard IDs
• Publisher information
• OA content
• Article level metadata
• Local catalogs

11. “All of our Information is in One Place”
The Global and the Local are equally important
Access again rises to the top

12. Defining a Knowlegebase
“It knows everything that is online and has a link to
everything that is online to get the user there, it
provides access and the metadata of title, date, url,
package and publisher about all electronic resources.”

13. Goats on the move: Services we want to
use our KB data

15. • Providing Access is highly important
• ERM/Discovery-newer or not used

16. “The Link Resolver is in Constant Use”
Access again!

17. The Grass is Always Greener: A Caveat
about KB Problems

18. “It's Hard to Say, It's a “Goat Rodeo" Out
There.”
Not consistent because certain formats are a mess
As librarians, we often only see the problems, not the successes

19. Problems with the Data

20. “Our Serials are a Mess”

21. “Content Vendors are unable to tell us
what they are selling”
Librarians feel out of the data loop

22. “Bad data, bad data, bad data”

23. “The data is not updated frequently, if at
all”

24. “Faulty vendor-supplied metadata”
Most inaccuracies reported=categories tied directly to patron access (not titles
this time!)

25. “There are title inconsistencies even
within an aggregator’s own content
platforms!”
Titles continue to be problematic
Part and parcel with Change Tracking issues

26. “Ebook data is sketchy.”
Much smaller data set/types of fields noted - harder to draw conclusions
Many of these would be brand new to KBs

27. Solving KB problems: What the
community would like to see improved

28. “Improvement of any or all of the above
problem”

29. “Greater Ability to Fix Errors Without
Going Through Cumbersome Reporting
Process”
Relates directly to issues with slowness, title tracking, and communication

30. Importance of Tracking Changes over
Time

31. “more consistency in quality of data
across publishers”

32. “Notifications When Updates Have Been
Made to Certain Collections”

33. They are all important; Choosing the best

34. Importance of metadata for Managing
Journals

35. Importance of Metadata for Managing
Ebooks

36. One size does not fit all!
• Additional data
elements needed to
describe other
formats
• Ebooks
• Streaming media

37. Streaming Media: Beyond the usual
Metadata desired
•Date (year, start/end dates)
•File types (media/content type)
•Length of film (run time)
•Author
•Section level URL
•Source name
•Equipment needed
•Usage restrictions
•Sub start/end dates
•Director, creators and actors
•Studio
•Authentication type
•Database URL

38. Movement in the KB space: Future
Direction and Possibilities

40. Integration with the ILS: No longer an
isolated service

41. Standards
ONIX

42. Join the KB rodeo: KB+, GOKb, and
National KBs

43. KB+: Balancing Act

44. • Mellon Grant, April 2012-Dec
2013
• Knowledgebase for Kuali
OLE
• Build a Global Open
Knowledgebase (GOKb) that
will be community
maintained
• Focus on data management
and integration services
Community Source
Projects: Better Together

45. GOKb Partners

46. Initial GOKb scope
• Knowledgebase for Kuali OLE
• Community managed data
• The “managed collection”
• Not a replacement for vendor Kbs
• Open dataset available to all
• Way for libraries and vendors to share identifiers

47. GOKb Timeline
GOKb and KB+
collaborate on data
model
GOKb Phase I:
Proof of Concept
Release
GOKb funded by
Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation and Kuali
OLE Partner libraries
GOKb Public
Release
Continued community
development with
support of Kuali OLE,
JISC, and future Project
Partners
GOKb Phase II:
Partner Release

48. Concerns about GOKb
• Quality of data
• Amount of work/time required
• Training
• Managing multiple kbs/integrating
data
• Managing varied local data
• Size of the community/adequate
participation
• Provider/Publisher Cooperation
• Timely updates
• Admin Support
• Need to see utility to daily work
• Understanding global data/changes
• Comparison to Commercial KBs
• Consistent decision-making
• Auto vs manual updates to data
• Varied community expertise
• Tracking who performed
changes/Source of changes
• Money
• Use of standards
• Competence of permanent staff
involved at GOKb

49. Principles

50. Community Data Management
Roles
•GOKb editors
•OLE partner editors
•Other editors
•Data contributors

51. Co-referencing Service:
Building a bridge between identifiers and resources

52. International Cooperation and National KBs

53. Also in this space: LOCKSS, Keepers
• LOCKSS: Preservation
of content; concern
with entitlements
• The Keepers Registry:
knowing who is
archiving content; also
concerned with
entitlements

54. Take-aways • KB’s are considered core
systems for providing access
to e-resources.
• The community expects a KB
to include everything
electronic and licensed.
• Strong concerns exist about
the information supply chain
– speed, accuracy and
standards adoption.

55. Take-aways
•The community is strongly
interested in accurate data
related to the title, not only
title normalization but also
title history.
•There are strong concerns
about data quality, the
community is hopeful that
projects like GOKb will make a
difference. Wondering….Can we do it?

56. Take-aways
• People want systems that
integrate and want to solve
the problem of siloed data.
• The community values both
global and local data, which
expands the scope of KBs
beyond access to
management
• There is movement in the
KB space – solutions and
new directions will soon
follow.
Relying on each other

57. Questions?
• It may be a goat rodeo
out there, but imagine
the possibilities!