At the upcoming March 25 meeting, the group will explore what it means to do business on the web scale. This post is the second in a series of two blogs posts on the topic of making metadata scalable for the web. You can read the first post here.
There are numerous announcements peppering the web that library systems are now incorporating Schema.org to enhance search engine optimization (SEO). VuFind, an open source ILS developed and maintained by Villanova University’s Falvey Memorial Library, recently released VuFind 2.2 with Schema.org microdata integration for their OPAC.
In October, Koha 3.14.0 was released with support for Schema.org microdata in their open source OPAC. Evergreen, another open source ILS is now doing the same. Way back in 2012, OCLC added Schema.org mark-up to their WorldCat bibliographic records–
Exciting times, right? So how exactly is Schema.org enhancing the discoverability of a library’s collection via a web search? I was able to locate three libraries from a list of websites using Schema.org.
George Washington University Libraries is using Schema.org on their FindIt library service. I discovered the following Breashears & Salkeld book.
Searching “Last climb : the legendary Everest expeditions of George Mallory” in Google equals no hits for GWU Libraries. Nothing. Perhaps I am not understanding the functionality of the FindIt API and how it differs from a traditional OPAC, but I thought something would appear—especially since GWU Libraries took the time to use the following Schema.org itemprop tags.
The Goodreads result shown below was the second item generated from my Google search. Goodreads does use Schema.org—as you see the search generated more enriched data (i.e. ratings, stars, votes, summary, breadcrumb links). Unfortunately, I didn’t see any libraries that had unique information (holdings) display in my Google search—including WorldCat. Ditto for my Bing and Yahoo! searches.
Right now Schema.org seems to be adding value to search results for Google Scholar/Books, Amazon, and Good Reads. But wait—Amazon and Google Scholar/Books are not using Schema.org. [scratch head]
OCLC’s WorldCat has tons of rich bibliographic, relationship, user-contributed reviews, and holdings data and they are using Schema.org—why the heck aren’t their results generating holdings in their search displays?
I applaud folks like those at GWU Libraries who have jumped in and implemented Schema.org. Why don’t you give it a shot and search for your favorite or most dreaded work. Any luck seeing value added data to your search results?
2 Comments
Hi Natalie–thanks so much for taking the time to research and share your results with everyone.
I like how your search result returned an image at the bottom of the page. I replicated your first search and for some reason my page did not include the thumbnail of the image. Ditto with Yahoo and Bing. That image and the relevancy you saw are encouraging, though.
I visited Marshall Breeding’s Library Technology Guide for GWU Libraries: http://www.librarytechnology.org/lwc-displaylibrary.pl?RC=2384 It looks like they are using Voyager for their ILS and AquaBrowser Library as their Discovery Layer. The site doesn’t mention the FindIt API so maybe it is an experimental project.
I discovered NCSU Libraries’ Rare and Unique Digital Collections has incorporated Schema.org. Through the digital collection I discovered item: http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/mc00383-001-ff0006-001-001_0038. I searched Google for the Item title, “Architect, Charles N. Parker, 1927 panel.” My search returned the exact item in the NCSU Libraries’ Rare and Unique Digital Collections as the first hit. The image from the collection was also available as a thumbnail at the bottom of the page results.
I also tried another search through George Washington University Libraries through their FindIt library service and discovered this item: http://findit.library.gwu.edu/item/2278513. I searched Google for “Evaluation research in education” and also tried “Evaluation research in education / William W. Cooley, Paul R. Lohnes.” No hits. Perhaps GWU Libraries have some bugs to work out?