Transcript Photos by Joseph Mehling '69 Discovery Environments What’s next? RUSA/MARS Local Systems & Services Discovery Systems: Promises and Reality Panel Discussion ALA Midwinter June 24, 2012 Barbara.

Photos by Joseph Mehling '69
Discovery Environments
What’s next?
RUSA/MARS Local Systems & Services
Discovery Systems: Promises and
Reality Panel Discussion
ALA Midwinter June 24, 2012
Barbara DeFelice
Director, Digital Resources &
Scholarly Communications Programs
Dartmouth College Library
Dartmouth:
Undergraduate College
Research University
4200 undergrads
1700 grad
students in:
1,004 faculty
Sciences,
CompLit, Digital
Musics, Health
Care Delivery,
Liberal Studies
Baker-Berry Library
at the center of campus
6 subject specific libraries within schools
& departmental buildings
Photos by Joseph Mehling '69
Schools of:
Business
Engineering
Medicine
Single search: Summon, Catalog & Library Web
What do the current discovery
services do well?
1. Collect huge amounts of quality information and return
search results in a logical, relevant order
2. Provide the Google-like experience that patrons expect
3. Introduce patrons to unfamiliar resources
What can libraries offer to influence future
development?
1. Dartmouth does extensive assessment and analysis to
support goals and decision-making
2. Currently conducting a needs assessment to determine
required functionalities (front and back ends) for next
generation of library management system
3. Patron focus groups offer a rich set of data that
describe work behaviors, desired tools
4. Can these results help us understand where discovery
layers can go?
What do undergraduate students want?
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Easy to use (Summon, GoogleBooks mentioned)
Get to full text or original objects (Special Collections)
Move among physical and digital collections easily
Find help when needed
Distinguish reviews of an item from item itself
Intuitive search process
Easy to find control-filtering, advanced search options
Narrow searches by categories
Related items
Prompts for other formats rather than being swamped
What do graduate students want?
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Tools to manage references and papers
Tools for text analysis
Citation impact factor included
Visualize networks of papers
Multiple resources at once (Summon listed)
Control results- relevancy, scope, personalization
Relevancy display shows newer articles
Status of work-preprint to published paper
Share annotations
What are faculty looking for?
• Author name disambiguation
• Citation and ranking information
• Information on other institutions, faculty and research
groups
• Serendipity
• Immediate access to print and electronic sources
• Current awareness
• Data set support
Can discovery bring together ease of use and
power tools?
Photo by Stephen Flanders
Wish list
• Managing full text results
• Scholarly databases
• Scope to discipline
• Relevancy of results
• Author disambiguation
• Specific item or referral
to start
• Get directly to object or
full text
• Depth of content
• Authority of content
• Variety of sources
• Saving/repeat searches
• Reuse content
Future features?
• Integration of result and
object management tools
• Larger result sets
• Contextual links to scholarly
databases
• Control of relevancy factors
• Author information
• Exact reference search
• Auto fill doc delivery forms
• Metadata from all sources
• Clear descriptions of
content
• Tools to manage process
• Rights information
photo by Eli Burak '00
Challenge for discovery services:
Remain a resource that is incredibly easy to use while adding
powerful tools to give patrons the filtering and control needed to use
information for teaching and research in an increasingly sophisticated
environment.
Thanks!
User Assessment Group
(focus groups and report)
Pat Fisken
Heather Blunt
Don Fitzpatrick
David Green
Lucinda Hall
Janifer Holt
Jeremy Seidling
Consultation:
Elizabeth E. Kirk