Abstract
Web-scale discovery services for libraries provide deep discovery to a library’s local and licensed content, and represent an evolution, perhaps a revolution, for end user information discovery as pertains to library collections. This article frames the topic of web-scale discovery, and begins by illuminating web-scale discovery from an academic library’s perspective – that is, the internal perspective seeking widespread staff participation in the discovery conversation. This included the creation of a discovery task force, a group which educated library staff, conducted internal staff surveys, and gathered observations from early adopters. The article next addresses the substantial research conducted with library vendors which have developed these services. Such work included drafting of multiple comprehensive question lists distributed to the vendors, onsite vendor visits, and continual tracking of service enhancements. Together, feedback gained from library staff, insights arrived at by the Discovery Task Force, and information gathered from vendors collectively informed the recommendation of a service for the UNLV Libraries.
Highlights
Web-scale discovery services, combining vast repositories of content with accessible, intuitive interfaces, hold the potential to greatly facilitate the research process
A portion of these questions are provided as part of the refined list of questions presented in appendix F. This second set of questions dealt with complex discussions of metadata quality, such as what level of content publishers and aggregators were providing for indexing purposes, e.g., full text, abstracts, table of contents, author-supplied keywords or subject headings, or particular citation and record fields), and the vendor’s stance on content neutrality, i.e., whether they are entering into exclusive agreements with publishers and aggregators, and, if the discovery service vendor is owned by a company involved with content, if that content is promoted or weighted more heavily in result sets
Bibliographic Services Task Force, Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University of California: Final Report ([Pub location?] University of California Libraries, 2005), 2, http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/BSTF/Final.pdf
Summary
Web-scale discovery services, combining vast repositories of content with accessible, intuitive interfaces, hold the potential to greatly facilitate the research process. A portion of these questions are provided as part of the refined list of questions presented in appendix F This second set of questions dealt with complex discussions of metadata quality, such as what level of content publishers and aggregators were providing for indexing purposes, e.g., full text, abstracts, table of contents, author-supplied keywords or subject headings, or particular citation and record fields), and the vendor’s stance on content neutrality, i.e., whether they are entering into exclusive agreements with publishers and aggregators, and, if the discovery service vendor is owned by a company involved with content, if that content is promoted or weighted more heavily in result sets. The success of a web-scale discovery service at the UNLV Libraries is a story yet to be written, but one full of promise
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