Endeca:
a faceted search solution for
the library catalog
Kristin Antelman & Emily Lynema
UNC University Library Advisory Council
June 15, 2006
Overview

Why did we do this?

What is Endeca?

NCSU investment

Working with a non-library vendor

Assessing the results
Some user reaction
“The new Endeca system is incredible. It would be difficult
to exaggerate how much better it is than our old online
card catalog (and therefore that of most other
universities). I've found myself searching the catalog
just for fun, whereas before it was a chore to find what I
needed.”
- NCSU Undergrad, Statistics
“The new library catalog search features are a big
improvement over the old system. Not only is the
search extremely fast, but seemingly it's much more
intelligent as well.”
- NCSU faculty, Psychology
Why did we do this?

Existing catalogs are hard to use:


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known item searching works pretty well,
but …
users often do keyword searching on topics and
get large result sets returned in system sort order
catalogs are unforgiving on spelling errors,
stemming
Catalog value is buried

Subject headings are not leveraged in
searching

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they should be browsed or linked from, not
searched
Data from the item record is not leveraged

should be able to filter by item type, location,
circulation status, popularity
How does Endeca work?



Endeca Information Access Platform coexists with SirsiDynix Unicorn ILS and Web2
online catalog
Endeca indexes MARC records exported
from Unicorn
Index is refreshed nightly with records
added/updated during previous day
Endeca IAP overview
Endeca Information Access Platform
NCSU exports
and reformats
Data
Foundry
Parse text
files
Raw MARC
data
MDEX
Engine
Indices
Flat text
files
HTTP
HTTP
Client
browser
NCSU Web
Application
Quick demo

http://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu
Implementation team





Information Technology (4)
 Team chair and project manager – IT department head
 Technical lead - Java-trained librarian
 ILS Librarian – managing data extracts
 Technical manager – determining appropriate technologies
Research and Information Services (1)
 Reference librarian – experience with public services and OPAC
problems
Metadata and Cataloging (1)
 Cataloging librarian – identifying data for indexing and display;
fixing backend data problems
Digital Library Initiatives (1)
 Interface development – mockups, usability, beta testing
Team met weekly during implementation (total of 40-60 hours)
Implementation timeline



License / negotiation: Spring 2005
Acquire: Summer 2005
Implementation:





August 2005 : vendor training
September 2005 : finalize requirements
October 2005 – January 2006 : design and
development
January 12, 2006 : go-live date
It doesn’t have to be perfect!
Ongoing investments

Little ongoing work required for maintenance
once application is deployed



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Infrequent data refreshing from ILS
Version upgrades
6 member product team meets bi-weekly
Lots of development ideas (as time / library
priorities afford)!
Saving time previously invested in Web2
OPAC enhancement
MarcAdapter: a case study



NCSU implementation required local program
to transform MARC data for Endeca
Endeca staff recognized effort required to
duplicate this process at each library, and
Quickly created a MarcAdapter plugin for raw
MARC data


Ability to create local field mappings and special
case handlers
Eliminate need for external MARC 21 translation
and file merging
Basic statistics
(March – May 2006)
Requests by Search Type
Search ->
Navigation
29%
Search 51%
Navigation
20%
Navigation statistics
(March – May 2006)
Navigation Requests by Dimension
23,848
Availability
169,249
LC Classification
155,856
Subject: Topic
65,545
Subject: Genre
74,985
Format
87,221
Library
59,248
Subject: Region
Subject: Era
38,605
Language
38,074
70,516
Author
0
30,000
60,000
90,000
Requests
120,000
150,000
Navigation statistics
(March – May 2006)
Navigation by Dimensions
New
4%
Language
5%
Subject: Era
5%
Availability
3%
LC Classification
20%
Subject: Region
7%
Subject: Genre
8%
Subject: Topic
19%
Author
9%
Format
9%
Library
11%
Sorting statistics
(March – May 2006)
Sorting Requests
Call Number
6%
Author A-Z
9%
Title A-Z
13%
Most Popular
19%
Pub Date
53%
Other interesting tidbits…

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Authority searching decreased 45%
Keyword searching increased 230%

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(March 2006)
Caveat: default catalog search changed from title
authority to keyword
~ 5% of keyword searches offered spelling
correction or suggestion

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3.1% - automatic spell correction
2.3% - “Did you mean…” suggestion
Usability testing
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10 undergraduate students

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Endeca performed as well as OPAC for
known-item searching in usability test

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5 with Endeca catalog
5 with old Web2 OPAC
89% Endeca tasks completed ‘easily’ (8/9)
71% OPAC tasks completed ‘easily’ (15/21)
Endeca performed better than OPAC for
topical searching in usability test.
Topical searching tasks
Topical Task Success: Web2
Topical Task Success: Endeca
Failed
22%
Failed
34%
Easy
36%
Hard
3%
Easy
58%
Medium
17%
Hard
23%
Medium
7%
Average topical task duration
A relevance study
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Are search results in Endeca more likely to
be relevant to a user’s query than search
results in Web2 OPAC?
100 topical user searches from 1 month in fall
2005
How many of top 5 results relevant?


40% relevant in Web2 OPAC
68% relevant in Endeca catalog
Future plans

FRBR-ized displays

FAST (Faceted Access to Subject Terms)
instead of LCSH

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Enrich records with supplemental Web
Services content – more usable TOCs,
book reviews, etc.
More integration with website search

Use Endeca to index local collections
Thanks
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/endeca
Emily Lynema, Systems Librarian for Digital
Projects
emily_lynema@ncsu.edu