Super-size EBSCO ?

Yesterday we had a return visit from EBSCO showing their Resource Discovery solution – along with colleagues from Wolverhampton. It was good to see a live demo and they told us that most of the major publishers were on board – with current exceptions being JSTOR and Proquest Dissertations ; Lexis US Academic (but not yet Lexis UK).

I felt the key question was unanswered though : when we saw the pre-indexed search return interface, one of the limiters was ‘items electronically or physically in the library already‘ : and we wanted to know: how did their Resource Discovery tool know about our subscribed e-collections? Was it from our catalogue (where it took regular updates from) or our link resolver knowledgbase ? EBSCO may well answer this later but I was disappointed they couldn’t confirm where the data was being sourced from. It made think that for all of these products – sorry for the image – ‘opera isn’t over till the fat lady sings’: ie until the user gets to our ’stuff’.

The quality of the link resolver becomes key – after all Serials Solutions  seem to be building their Summon case on 360 Link, not 360 Search – and the nature of the metadata agreements that allow all this nice sharing of thin and not so thin data between publishers to go on. For the time being EBSCO seem to have got deals with nearly everyone – I just hope they don’t carry their reputation for signing exclusive deals into the resource discovery marketplace.

Also I think their interface looks like it needs to go on a diet…maybe EDS version 2.0 (due out in June 2010) will be a bit more easy on the eye.

image credit :jblyberg

Primo 3

We recently had a demo of Primo 3 and it was interesting to see how quickly new developments and functionality had been added since the last demo in November

The issue of coverage is still a concern so it was good to hear about the Primo Publisher Program to encourage publishers to allow access to content. The success of these massive indexes is on the content they contain and with products from publishers such as proquest & ebsco I was keen to see what Primo could offer.

One of the most interesting features of Primo was the integration with the library catalogues. In the demo we saw availabilty information of items & the option to place a request from the Primo interface. I especially like the function of limiting your results to only view items which are shown as on the shelf. This however raised an interesting  question of whether a sepearate catalogue interface was really needed.  I can see a real benefit in reducing the number of front end interfaces to maintain although the key is if it can develiver the appropiate functionality. They have this functionality working with Aleph, Voyager and Unicorn to date.

Our next step is to try and talk to Primo customers and find out more about thier experience with the product.

Resource discovery: demonstration by EBSCO

Following on from our autumn programme of visits, EBSCO are making a return visit to demonstrate their EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) which was launched over Christmas – this time the demonstration will be in the Library Teaching Room, Mary Seacole Library on Wednesday 3^rd March, at 2pm.

Look forward to seeing you there !

image credit: NASA

Being ‘tickled’ by resource discovery

Ken Dodd sculpture at Liverpool Lime St station

We visited Liverpool University library today and talked to Terry, Roy and Dave about their experience of search tools, Summon and Ebsco Discovery Service (EDS).

Liverpool have been beta testing Summon for approx 9 months and have just recently begun beta testing Ebsco Search Discovery http://www.liv.ac.uk/Library/e-library/discover.html. Like us, and many libraries, they are looking to provide a ‘quick, simultaneous access to the Library’s quality-assured print and electronic resources’

Having had the sales pitch from the vendors we were keen to see the other side of the coin and hear about a live implementation. We were fortunate that Liverpool were happy to share their experience of Summon to date and this presentation, delivered at a recent JIBS usergroup -  ‘Holy grail or leaky cup’, provides a great summary.

The look & feel and speed of search results  in Summon were definite positives. However a key issue was with the content in terms of currency, quality, coverage and linking to the full text (via SFX).

Liverpool are just about to start beta testing Ebsco Discovery Service and intial thoughts have been positive. In terms of content as Ebsco were able to clearly identify what resources they have access to index. However the look & feel of the interface is more cluttered.

Liverpool found the implementation of both Summon and the Ebsco product very straightforward and both are hosted. It seemed that there was more opportunity of easy customisation with Ebsco. One of the features I like about Ebsco is the possibility of allowing searches of only selected resources, this could be used to provide more targeted services to groups of users.

I was disappointed to note that discovery tools were facing the same issues federated search encountered at the beginning such as a more US focus to the coverage,  not all publishers allowing access to the data etc.  I had hoped we would have learned more  from that experience.

It seemed clear that the success of these tools is about how much of  the libraries collection is able to be harvested, but as noted in an earlier post, Ebsco indicated that publishers would be unwilling to allow access to their data. I think it is worrying to see these signs of exclusivity between the publishers and it erodes a potentially valuable service.

What I took away from the day was to focus more on our collection, I am keen that we take a close look at our resources and confirm which can be effectively searched and results displayed within these tools.

I am also interested to find out more about how our users want to find this information, while I appreciate that everyone wants the simplicity of Google I am unsure how this can be provided with more complicated data such as statistics, reports, images etc.  I am hoping someone has the answer.

Many thanks to Terry, Roy and Dave for such a useful day

Resource discovery: demonstration by Innovative Interfaces

 The 4th of the demos we’ve organised  from resource discovery system suppliers takes place on Friday November 6th at 10:30, when Innovative Interfaces will be talking about their Encore platform, together with their federated search tool ResearchPro.

For examples of Encore sites, see University of Glasgow library’s page ; and also University of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Please come and join us for more tea, coffeee, biscuits and another peek at what resource discovery for our students might look like in the future.

Resource discovery: a new twist ?

Previously we have seen two different solutions to the problem of Resource Discovery:  1) pre-built ‘connectors’ built to allow a federated search across our electronic resources  and 2) a discovery tool that uses metadata that is pre-indexed from the publishers, and also incorporates our local catalogue data. Exlibris say that ideally we would need both solutions; Serials Solutions say that we can run 2) without the need for 1).

I thought the demo from EBSCO last week was interesting as their comments were made from the position of a subscription agent . They cast doubt on publishers’ willingness to open up their data for harvesting – and said that libraries would always need both solutions in place.

What will Innovative say when they come and see us on the 6th November?

image credit: meknits

Resource discovery: demonstration by EBSCO

The 3rd of the demos we’ve organised  from resource discovery system suppliers takes place on Friday October 23rd at 10:30, when EBSCO will be talking about their Discovery Service, together with their federated search tool EBSCOhost Integrated Search

Please come and join us for tea, coffeee, biscuits and another peek at what resource discovery for our students might look like in the future

image credit: alef

Resource Discovery: a brief summary of what we’ve seen so far…

signpost

We are now halfway through our Autumn demos and we’ve had two interesting presentations so far, Robert Bley from Ex Libris showed us Primo and MetaLib, and Richard Burckitt and Richard Illingworth from Serials Solutions demonstrated Summon.

Both presentations highlighted research showing that readers understand and appreciate that resources offered by the Library are both high quality and relevant. The problem we have is that our readers struggle with the complexity of the systems we provide to lead them to those resources. Although the Library wins hands down over internet search engines as a credible, trustworthy and accurate source of information, students still turn to Google because it is so much more convenient and easy to use than the bewildering array of interfaces that we confront them with. There is a pressing need for us to make premium grade and expensive library approved content available from a single starting point; an interface that matches the expectations of today’s readers.

Both companies offer products that are a significant improvement on what we currently have, and Google is an obvious influence. Primo and Summon both allow searches to be carried out across a range of library controlled and commercial subscription resources. They both offer a single search box, an advanced search option, groups of facets as a means of refining searches and filtering results, “did you mean” functionality and enhanced content in the form of book jackets, tagging, reader reviews. etc.

Behind the scenes the two are quite different – Primo builds a local index with metadata from library controlled resources; the catalogue, digital repositories, content management systems etc, but relies on a federated search engine (i.e. Metalib) to search across commercial e-resources that the Library subscribes to. A single interface allows readers to search either the local data sources, or the commercial database and full text journal services, but the two searches are separated because federated search tends to deliver results slowly.

Summon from Serials Solutions uses a single index that merges local metadata with metadata harvested from commercial publishers. Readers search one index that combines all of the resources they are entitled to access (or, more accurately, the resources that Serials Solutions have been able to index). The search can also be expanded to cover everything in the Serials Solutions index, regardless of whether the Library subscribes to the resource. The results are delivered at Google like speed as the search is pointing at one index rather than multiple targets.

Interestingly, ExLibris are also in the process of negotiating with publishers to harvest metadata directly into a central index, they say that coverage isn’t wide enough yet to do away with the need for a federated search engine, but that over time reliance on federated search will inevitably decline. Serials Solutions on the other hand claim that they no longer need federated search because their comprehensive central index can provide 95% and better coverage of a Library’s resources.

Both products are offered on a subscription basis; Primo is available both as a hosted service or as a locally managed application, while Summon is only available via the Software as a Service model.

The turnout for both sessions was good, but we’d really love to know what you thought of what you’ve seen so far.

image credit: Dutch Nationaal Archief

Resource discovery: demonstration by Serials Solutions

The second in our Autumn series of presentations is happening in the Training Room, City North on Friday 16th October 2009, at 10.30am when Serials Solutions will be showing 360 Search (federated search) and Summon (next-generation discovery tool).

Here is an example of a Summon site at University of Liverpool who are beta-testing the product.

We hope you can come along, and we’d welcome your comments after the event. 

image credit: pargon

“Discoverability – users can’t tolerate a disconnect

Just picked up a tweet from Lorcan Dempsey’s  (OCLC) and his blog http://orweblog.oclc.org/ - which summarizes a report by the University of Minnesota where they discussed key trends in their users’ experience of services. “Search, once one of the key skills and specialties of librarians, is a now a daily activity for the vast majority of our users”.  They “do not distinguish between discovery and delivery”  and “find it discordant to experience this disconnect “.  That’s my experience exactly : when users who are used to getting hits on Google come asking “why can’t I get through to this full-text?”