It’s that time of year where we ask for feedback from you through the Copac Annual survey. This is your opportunity to tell us about your use of Copac – including what you like and what you don’t like – and how you want the service to develop.

In previous surveys you said:

‘I’d like more coverage outside HE‘: We add new libraries every year and we are currently focused on specialist collections from libraries outwith the university sector, increasing the visibility of research collections that may be less well known.

‘Eliminate duplicate entries‘: The number of comments about duplicate records showed this was a significant issue for many people. We have therefore made some major changes to how we handle duplicates and the level of duplication has gone down. In particular we are now deduplicating records for pre-1800 materials; something we didn’t do in the past. Records for these early materials have particular complexities and we know we have more to do here, so this is something we will continue to work on.

‘Not always clear if journal is electronic or print‘: There was a need for us to indicate the format of a document more clearly. So amongst the interface changes this year we’ve added a ‘flag’ to show the format of each document. This isn’t perfect – as the records aren’t perfect – but it helps clarify the displays; again this is something we will work to refine over time.

‘Putting in a range of dates gives me too many extraneous records‘: A date range search on Copac is not straightforward as it needs to encompasses many different materials, including periodicals published over a long time period. But our original method of dealing with date ranges wasn’t working for everyone. We have now changed this so the date range search is much more precise.

We have also made a range of less obvious changes to the interface to make it more consistent, easier to use, and work more effectively with mobile devices.

We can’t implement everything you request, there may be technical or practical issues, or simply a difference of option – ‘Include more libraries’ vs ‘don’t add any more collections’. But we try to find a balanced way through such differences and the things we can’t implement now we retain for potential future development.

Volunteering to help us

In the last survey some respondents kindly supplied their contact details, expressing interest in further testing of Copac. We have recently taken some people up on this offer and with their help we are carrying out detailed testing of the Copac interface.

In the 2013 survey there was interest in: ‘a few ‘refine your search’ options (type of resource, creator, date, language, etc.)’. So we have also been asking our volunteers how they feel about the introduction of these types of ‘search facets’ – and which ones they’d find useful. The reaction has been positive, so we’ll be looking at this further next year.

What now?

At the moment we are beginning to work on a hardware move, taking Copac into the cloud onto a new and more flexible platform. This will be a major exercise, but once it is complete we’ll be working again on the Copac interface to see how we can best respond to your development requests, whilst balancing conflicting requirements – including the wishes of those who’s view is emphatic: ‘DON’T CHANGE IT!’

We rely on your feedback to help guide how Copac develops and to inform our funders about your views of the service. So, if you’ve not already done so please fill in our annual survey using the link on the home page - and contribute to shaping Copac in the future.

We are moving offices! Telephone numbers remain the same but contact may unavailable Friday/Monday. Email should be unaffected and we’ll reply as  soon as we can.

Our new address is:

Copac, Jisc
J Floor, Sackville Street Building
The University of Manchester
Sackville Street
Manchester
M1 3BB

Thanks for bearing with us!

We’ve released a new Copac database and made a number of revisions to the interface. The most visible changes are:

• An updated look which will work better with mobile devices.
• Increased deduplication, including all pre-1800 materials.
• Clearer indication of document format (eg. print vs electronic).
• Options to expand merged records. You can look ‘under the bonnet’ of a merged record to see the original individual records supplied by each library, or just a subset of the original records eg. just those for printed materials.

We have currently removed the options for sorting search results. This is a temporary measure, one of a number of changes we have made whilst we assess how the new database performs now it’s in service. We will reintroduce the sort options again once we have a better sense of the overall system performance. We are also looking to move off our old hardware in the near future with one aim being to increase response times.

Changes to the database and interface have been made in response to feedback, in particular balancing concerns about duplicate records vs the desire not to lose access to the original records from each library for early printed materials. We’ve recently been working with Copac users on the interface changes and we’re continuing with interface testing and development later this year. So any feedback you have on the interface will be valuable for us to include into the ongoing development.

Note: The document format identification and deduplication are not perfect, they are both affected by the variability of the data. Deduplication of records for early printed materials has raised particular issues. We have a range of checks to try to deal with some of the record variation in both these ares, but we will be looking further at these in the future.

Missing catalogues:

Four of our contributors changed to a new library system last year, so to ensure we can continue to update their data we need a complete catalogue reload. They have had difficulties successfully exporting data so, currently, four catalogues are missing from Copac. We have been working with one of the libraries and their system supplier to help resolve problems with their data export. This has taken some time, but we should begin the load of the York catalogue shortly. If this goes well we will be aiming to load the other missing catalogues as soon as possible. The libraries affected are:

• Imperial College London
• University of Manchester
• University of Sheffield
• University of York (including NRM and York Minster)

Ongoing development

The new database and revised interface have involved major changes behind-the-scenes to provide us with a stable base for continued service expansion, as well as the potential to introduce new facilities in the future. We have some ongoing system issues and we’re working to mitigate these in the short term, whilst at the same time planning a move from our old hardware onto a new cloud platform, with a focus on response times.

Keeping in touch

You can stay in touch with Copac activity through:

• Twitter: twitter.com/copac
• Our mailing list: copac@jiscmail.ac.uk
• Or via the blog: copac.ac.uk/blog/

You can also provide feedback on the service at any time through the Copac helpdesk: copac@mimas.ac.uk as well as by filling in our annual user survey. We really appreciate your feedback and the comments we get help guide the development of the service.

We’ve been making some interface changes and we’d appreciate your feedback. Please try the Beta trial interface and use one of the email links on the screens to let us know how you get on. The revised interface works with a new Copac database which we will be releasing by the end of July. Note: both the database and interface are still being actively developed and are subject to change without notice.

There are a number of areas we are still working on but we would value comments at this stage before the soft launch of the interface changes next week. The most visible changes are:

• We have a done a lot of work on the deduplication and we are now deduplicating all records, including pre-1800 materials.
• The document format is clearer, eg. does a library have a print or electronic copy.
• There is an updated look and Copac will work better on mobile devices.

You can continue to use Copac in the same way as before, however, for those wanting to use them there are a couple of new features:

• Where we deduplicate records from multiple libraries we merge these together as before, however, if you wish you can now expand a merged record to see all the original records as supplied by each library; for example, if you are interested in early printed materials you can still see all the details of each copy.
• You can also expand a merged record to see just a sub-set of the original records eg. just the records for the print copies.

The interface is a work in progress. We have been working with some Copac users regarding the display changes and we’ll be doing more interface testing later in the year, so any feedback you have will be valuable as part of this ongoing development.

The eagle-eyed among you may have already spotted that the ‘Does this record have errors?’ button is no longer included in the Copac records.

This feature was introduced, initially as an experiment, a couple of years ago and we’ve been really pleased by the way people have responded – identifying problems and supplying information that we can pass on to our contributors. This helps them clean up their local database and in turn improve Copac.

However, the response has been such that at the moment we can’t keep up with the number of error reports. Our blog post from May 2013 explains the processes and time taken around correcting errors in Copac: copac.ac.uk/blog/2013/05/record-error-reports/.

This can usually be absorbed into our workflow but the Copac team has reached a particularly busy point this summer, with two major factors affecting our capacity to deal with the error reports:

* We’re due to release the new Copac database in a few weeks (watch this space!)

* Staff changes mean we’re stretched on the Copac support side at the moment.

The decision to switch off the feature wasn’t taken lightly! However, we do plan to bring this back. We are looking at ways to streamline the handling of error reports to make it easier for us to support, at which point we will reintroduce this feature.

Meanwhile, we’re very grateful to all Copac users who’ve given us feedback using the button.

We’re pleased to announce that the holdings of the Royal Academy of Arts Library have been added to Copac.

The Royal Academy Library holds a comprehensive collection of books and exhibition catalogues on British art, artists and architects, with a particular concentration on the life and practice of past and present Members of the Royal Academy and the history of the institution, its exhibitions and collections.

The Royal Academy of Arts Library. Photo: Benedict Johnson.

Holdings include complete runs of the Royal Academy annual (Summer) exhibition catalogues from 1769 to the present, and the loan exhibition catalogues from 1870 to now. The library also holds a special collection of illustrated books, which highlights the contribution of British artists to the illustration and design of the book.

The library’s Historic Book collection, comprising some 12,000 volumes published before 1920, reflects the early teaching philosophy of the Academy Schools. It includes rare volumes of engravings reproducing masterpieces from classical to post-Renaissance European art and architecture, and original editions of virtually all the early treatises on art, anatomy, perspective, colour theory and connoisseurship.

To browse, or limit your search to the holdings of the Royal Academy of Arts Library, go to the main tab on copac.ac.uk and choose ‘Royal Academy of Arts’ from the list of libraries.

Each of our contributing libraries supplies updates to keep Copac data current and accurate (this is generally weekly or monthly, but may be less frequent for smaller contributors whose collections are less subject to change). Due to circumstances beyond our control, some library catalogue updates on Copac are currently subject to delay.

The library catalogues for Imperial College London, Manchester, Sheffield and York Universities are all currently awaiting updates on the Copac database. These libraries have all moved to a new library management system, Alma, and are currently unable to export adequate data for Copac. Until Alma have resolved this problem the records on Copac will not reflect the latest information available on these libraries’ catalogues.

Meanwhile, at the Copac end we are actively testing the exported data with one of the libraries to help with resolving this problem. Once the data export is working for one of the libraries we are hoping to get updates back to normal for the affected libraries fairly quickly, but a system change requires a catalogue reload for each library which may take a few weeks overall.

The University of Birmingham is also changing library system and has suspended updates in the meantime. We are awaiting more information on their progress.

We hope this issue will be remedied soon but don’t have any confirmed date as yet. We do appreciate that this is frustrating and thank you for your patience.

Once the move to the new Copac database takes place we will be looking at more streamlined ways of managing data updates and supporting particularly our smaller contributors with this process. You can see when records were last added from each library on our Library Update page.

Dr Karen Attar is currently editing a new edition of the Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland: specialcollectionsdirectory.org for the Rare Books and Special Collections Group of CILIP. Here she reflects on how it relates to RLUK activity:

Recently I was looking again at the results of the survey carried out by the London Library and RLUK in 2010 on hidden collections: www.rluk.ac.uk/work/hiddencollectionsreportwork, conducted to gather evidence about the ongoing need for retrospective cataloguing. Findings included the facts that hidden collections are a problem (because, not being known, they are becoming marginalised and therefore cannot be earning their keep in terms of use); that some sectors have more hidden collections than others but that the problem is cross-sectoral; and that special collections, both printed and archival, form a significant proportion of the hidden collections. An intriguing point of the survey was its sheer breadth of coverage: not just the university and national libraries that are especially strongly connected with RLUK, but such diverse places as the National Portrait Gallery, Hull City Libraries, and the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution.

Editing the Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland makes one very aware of just how fascinating some of these hidden collections can be. Like the survey, the Directory aims to cover all libraries that are willing to make their holdings open to bona fide researchers: national libraries, university libraries, school libraries, ecclesiastical libraries of different levels and denominations (how many people know about the French Protestant Church’s library in London, which has existed since the early seventeenth century?), museum libraries, professional libraries, subscription libraries, club libraries, company libraries, and more. The only restriction is that they must contain printed rare book or special collections of at least fifty volumes. Libraries are asked to provide brief collection level descriptions providing the date range of material, subject matter, and other salient features; the provision of urls enables potential users to investigate in more detail from each library’s own website. Especially exciting is to see reports from libraries not represented in the previous edition of the Directory (1997) – some, but by no means all, new libraries. Take the following, for sheer diversity:

• The Congregation of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God in Brentford, Middlesex. This international Catholic religious order was founded by Frances Margaret Taylor (1832-1900), en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Margaret_Taylor who established a considerable reputation in the late-nineteenth-century as a journalist, author, and translator. It is to her that the order owes the origin of its library, which focuses on the various editions of the literary works of Fanny Taylor (aka Mary Magdalen Taylor) and her friend Lady Georgiana Fullerton. Given the century, this might sound pedestrian – but in fact Copac shows her output to be held in few libraries, mainly Oxford (16 titles), Cambridge (18 titles), Trinity College Dublin (10 titles) and Heythrop College, London (8 titles), and no library on Copac holds everything.
• Prison Service College Library, Rugby. Here there are some 200 volumes, mainly related to prisons, including some by the early prison reformer John Howard (1726-1790).

• The Laurence Sterne Trust www.laurencesternetrust.org.uk/the-collection/ at Shandy Hall, near York.
  

  Marbled page featured in ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’. Image reproduced with permission of the Laurence Sterne Trust.

  Founded in 1967, this holds the world’s largest collection of first and contemporary editions of the works by Anglo-Irish curate and writer Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), as well as a comprehensive run of later editions and of translations into more than fifteen foreign languages, and other books, manuscripts, and ephemera relating directly and indirectly to Sterne.

• The Grey Coat Hospital School, London. Headmaster William Dear bequeathed his collection to the school in 1728, and the subsequent donations enriched the library: mostly mathematical and Christian texts, reflecting the school’s history as a religious foundation that prepared its pupils to be ships’ navigators.
• The Mills Archive, Reading (founded 2002). www.millsarchive.org/. Its library contains about 3-4,000 rare, out-of-print or hard-to-find books and pamphlets on mills and milling worldwide from primitive technology through to the present day. Most titles were published in short runs or privately printed; about one-quarter are in foreign languages.
  

  The Mills Library. Image reproduced by permission of the Mills Archive.

Not all these collections are hidden. Some have opacs accessible from their own websites – and the definition for the ‘hidden collections’ study is that collections are not catalogued online; it does not look at how or where they are catalogued. Very few collections being reported to the Directory have no finding aid at all: many still count as ‘hidden’ for want of online cataloguing, but it is unusual not to have a card catalogue, a printed catalogue, or a handlist of some description, and sometimes this is mounted on the web. But one needs to know that an organisation like the Mills Archive or the Laurence Sterne Trust exists in order to go to its website and use its catalogue, and here the Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections meets a need by recording the presence of collections rich in editions of Emanuel Swedenborg (the Swedenborg Museum), economic pamphlets (the Marshall Library of Economics at the University of Cambridge), Regency novels written by women (Chawton House), and so forth.

A desire arising from RLUK’s hidden collections report was for an online register of retrospective cataloguing. The Directory does not quite provide that, but it goes a long way towards providing all the information by noting a large number of collections and by recording when they are not catalogued online, and noting the alternative method of accessing the contents. RLUK’s ‘Unique and Distinctive Collections’ project is intended to show ‘how RLUK members and other libraries can make the most of their collections in challenging times’. Reporting their presence and holdings to the Directory is a good start.

“It is a dream resource. I am so GLAD it exists!”

In November 2013 we carried out our annual user survey. This is an important means for us to gather information about who is using Copac, how users feel about the service, and what changes they would like to see. We really appreciate the time taken by the 1193 users who filled in the survey giving us valuable feedback.

We are already making a few minor interface changes in response to some of the comments we’ve received. Later in the year we are planning an interface review and the survey feedback will be valuable input into this process. However, as we make changes we will bear in mind the need to balance development requests with the wishes of those who do not want the interface to become too complex.

The following gives a brief summary of the survey results, with more details available for download.

We welcome feedback at any time, as well as suggestions for new catalogues to include on Copac that would be of value to the research community. You can contact us via the helpdesk at: copac@mimas.ac.uk

2013 User Survey Summary

Copac provides a global window on UK research materials, so whilst most Copac users are from the UK (76%) or Europe (15%), we also had responses from users across the world. IN terms of background, the largest single group of users are within Higher Education (58%), followed by Independent researchers (12%); but Copac is of value in a diverse range of areas, including publishing and bookselling in the commercial sector.

In looking at their role, some 41% of UK users are academic staff, students, or researchers. After this the largest single group of UK users is library staff (37%) many of whom will also be part of the academic community. Copac users have diverse subject interests, with many users indicating an interest in multiple subjects, but the largest proportion of responses were for the Humanities (UK 35%) and Social Sciences (UK 19%).

For many users Copac is clearly a regular feature of their work with 74% of UK users accessing Copac at least once a week. And they clearly value the service, with 94% of UK respondents agreeing that Copac saves them time, whilst 94% of UK respondents also reporting that Copac is easy to use. We are particularly pleased to see that 99% of UK users would recommend Copac. For non-UK users results were similar, but with a slightly larger proportion of neutral responses.

We’ve had some really valuable comments about what people both like about Copac and what they want to change. Many responses include feedback in more than one category so the numbers reflect the number of comments rather than users.

The database coverage and location finding ability are important for many (UK 54%), with comments also referring to the database coverage as enabling collection assessment, planning library visits, doing bibliographical research, and assessing document rarity. Ease of use and the range of facilities was also commented on favourably (UK 22%), as was the quality and completeness of the data (UK 20%).

In terms of what changes people would like to see, some 62% or users either didn’t respond or actively didn’t want change, so it is in this context that we need to respond to the change requests received. The largest single group of change request comments related to the interface (11%) whilst, given the importance of the database coverage, it is unsurprising that requests for more catalogues also feature (6%). Another 6% of comments related to a desire for specific new or improved facilities, with a further 5% concerned with improved deduplication and 5% wanting improved/enhanced record content; though there is sometimes an acknowledgement that these latter areas are inter-related and neither is easy to resolve.

The full survey results can be downloaded: Copac User Survey November 2013