Transcript Library Catalogues

Discovery and Discoverability
UCL London Dec 3rd 2014
#discoverydiscoverability
John Akeroyd
Open Web
Google
Google Scholar
Google Books
Bing, Ask etc..
Amazon
Wikipedia
Library Catalogues

OPACS

Enhanced

Web Front end

Interfaces/Aquabrowser/Vufind/
Biblio/Chamo/Blacklight
"Library" databases

Large Scale

SCOPUS

Ingenta

WeboS

Zetoc

JISC Journal archives

DOAB

etc.

Specific
multiple datasets
covering every
discipline
Publisher Platforms

Wiley

Sage

Elsevier

SpringerLink

Emerald Insight

FT.COM

etc..
Local Resources
•
•
•
•
•
Institutional Repositories
Archives
Learning Resources/Moodle
Intranet/Website
Blogs
Web scale library discovery
Single search box - consolidated index
Search

Simple interface

Fuzzy Matching/Soundex

Pre-search prompts

Phrase/Concept Query

Relevance Ranking


TF-IDF
Facets

Main authors

Format

Main topics/keyword frequency
Content

Click through

Licensed/open access

Availability data e.g. in library/ILL
Customisable

Branding

Look and Feel

Results/search page layout

Ranking


Own data first
APIs
Personalisation/Syndication

Saved search

Alerts

Twitter/facebook

Email

Referrals
Examples of Social Discovery ....
Lorcan Dempsey OCLC; NISO Virtual Conference: Web-Scale Discovery Services: Transforming Access to Library Resources
Research ….

Implementation

Decision processes; comparisons; mapping

Usage....levels; nature; mostly academic;

Usability; layouts/look and feel;

Impact on databases;impact on journal collections
see for example https://sites.google.com/site/urd2comparison/articles-on-discovery or Thomsett-Scott, B. & Reese,
P.E., 2012. Academic Libraries and Discovery Tools: A Survey of the Literature. College & Undergraduate Libraries,
19(2-4), p.123-143.
Problems
•
•
•
•
•
No content is complete
Different sets of results on different systems/ different results on same
system/different results at different times;
Search in publisher products/databases is more attuned to content metadata;
Lack of authority e.g. names
Poor use of functionality
Library is not the only place for discovery and maybe the least used .....
Discoverability
Not just about search/metadata but also

Browsability

Display

Marketing


Social discovery/Social
Networks/citations/reading
lists/VLE/blogs/linkedin/mendeley/
People