IMPROVING ACCESS TO GEOSCIENCE RESOURCES VIA CONTENT ENHANCEMENT

Content enhancement, or content enrichment, is the process of adding data elements such as table of contents or summaries to core metadata in order to improve search retrieval and/or item description. Research shows that content enrichment increases the number of unique terms per record, significantly improves retrieval, and increases the likelihood of use. The 2009 OCLC report “Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want” describes the metadata elements that are most important to users in determining if an item will meet their needs and the enhancements users would like to see made in online catalogs to assist them in consistently identifying appropriate materials. One of the key findings was that users rely on and expect enhanced content including summaries/abstracts and tables of contents.

Many library catalog records now routinely include such enhanced elements, and several commercial services exist to provide enhanced content on demand. This presentation will provide a review of recent research examining the effect of content enriched metadata on retrieval and use, and explore the potential of content enhancement to address long-standing issues related to access to the historic geoscience literature. Additionally, as users increasingly rely on unified discovery tools such as Google Scholar, SciVerse and Summon, the impact of content enhancement on improving retrieval will be addressed.