Discovery SystemsAndrew PreaterHead of Library Information SystemsLibrary Services, Imperial College London

@preater@imperiallibrary INSTG004

These slides:x.preater.com/ucldis-discovery

Slides and notes

• Everything discovery in 20 mins

or less

• Cultural & technical challenges

• Thinking points

Overview

Imperial College London

“Discovery is fun”– Salman Rushdie

Library discovery

• Next-generation

• Discovery layer / engine

• Resource Discovery / RDS

Note on terminology

• “The OPAC sucks” ca. 2006

OPACs

Smith, B. (2006) The OPAC sucks. Available at: https://youtu.be/tJD-safYEb0 (Accessed 16 October 2015)

“The OPAC is not the sun. The OPAC is at best a distant planet, every year moving farther from the orbit of its solar system.The user is the sun.”– Karen G. Schneider

OPACs

Scneider, K.G. (2006) ‘The user is not broken: a meme masquerading as a manifesto’, Free Range Librarian, June 3rd. Available at: http://freerangelibrarian.com/2006/06/03/the-user-is-not-broken-a-meme-masquerading-as-a-manifesto/ (Accessed October 18 2015)

• “The OPAC sucks” ca. 2006

• Next-gen discovery 2007–

Next-gen Discovery

Breeding, M. (2010) Next-gen library catalogs. New York, NY: Neil Schuman

Eg. aquabrowser

Eg primo

Eg primo

• “The OPAC sucks” ca. 2006

• Next-gen discovery 2006–

• Resource discovery 2009–

Resource Discovery Systems

Keene, C. (2011) ‘Discovery services’, Serials, 24 (2) pp. 193-196 [Online]. DOI:10.1629/24193 (Accessed: 16 October 2015).

Eg primo

Eg primo

State of the art today

Discovery / search

Digital content

LMS bibs

Big index

Archives (maybe)

Simple example

Primo

DSpaceAlmaPrimo Central Index

• “The OPAC sucks” ca. 2006

• Next-gen discovery 2007–

• Big indexes 2009–

• What’s next?

Discovery

Challenges

Key challenges of discovery I

• There’s no “one stop

shop”

Key challenges of discovery II

• There’s no “one stop shop”

• Reworking info literacy

Cardwell, C., Lux, V., and Snyder, R.J. 'Beyond simple, easy, and fast: reflections on teaching Summon', College & Research Libraries News, 73 (6) pp. 344-347 [Online]. Available at: http://crln.acrl.org/content/73/6/344.full.pdf

[Quote from anon.

academic removed for

web version]

Changing user expectations

Preater, A.J. (2015) ‘User experience at Imperial’, EPUG-UKI, London, 5 October. Available at:http://x.preater.com/primoux (Accessed: 18 October 2015)

Key challenges of discovery III

• There’s no “one stop shop”

• Reworking info literacy

• Metadata issues

Metadata optimisation

SHL language

coding

example

SHL metadata analysis

• 98,994 country of

publication

• 4,122 language codes

• 2,133 date codes

• Not an onward march of

‘progress’

• Systems are not neutral

• Critique: #critlib; #mashcat

Some points to think on

Leckie, G. and Buschman, J. (2010) 'Introduction: the necessity for theoretically informed critique in library and information science', in Critical theory for library and information science, Leckie, G., Given, L.M., and Buschman, J.E. (eds.), pp. vi-xxi. Oxford: Libraries Unlimited.