In the 21st century the academic library supports both research activities and teaching outcomes of faculty members and students through web-scale discovery services. These discovery services embrace new technologies to provide deep discovery of vast scholarly collections from a one-stop access interface, relying on a central index of pre-harvested data. With unified indexing of full-text library content, users’ experience of search and retrieval is greatly improved. Discovery is changing the way that library users find and access library materials, especially electronic resources. In the opening part of this presentation, I will share my experiences of using different discovery systems – Summon, Primo and Enterprise – in my current and previous roles, in term of differences, strengths and common areas among these tools. Relevant findings from the literature and latest research reports will be sketched. I will also speak of how technical services teams can support the next generation of discovery systems that will help the progress of the digital library field. The presentation will conclude with the approach of technical services towards future discovery.

1. How Discovery
Impacts on Users’
Experiences
Lilly HO, Assistant Director of Technical Services
Library and Learning Commons, Zayed University

2. How does Discovery Impact
on Users’ Experiences?
 Discovery in academic libraries
 Discovery: Summon, Primo Central, Enterprise
 What are the highly desirable features of these discovery?
 Why are these features highly desirable?
 How do these features impact on users’ experiences?
 Opportunities for future enhancements in discovery
services
 Approach of Technical Services towards Future discovery

3. Discovery in Academic
Libraries
 In the 21st century, the academic library supports both
research activities and teaching outcomes of faculty
members and students through discovery services.
 Discovery is changing the way that library users find and
access library materials, especially electronic resources.
 These discovery services embrace new technologies to
provide:

4. Discovery in Academic
Libraries
 Easy Information Retrieval
 One-stop access to all library resources with a single
search box on the library website.
 Easy, Effective and Reliable Searches
 Display of local holding information effectively with
unified index or real-time searching capability of full-text
library content.
 Users’ Experience of Search and Retrieval is GREATLY
improved

5. Discovery: Summon, Primo
Central, Enterprise
Discovery Summon Primo Central Enterprise
Year of 1st
Launch
2009 2009 2005
Company ProQuest ExLibris SirsiDynix
Feature Interface Interface,
Services
Interface
Search Single unified
index
Central index
(Real-time)
Web-scale
Retrieval Full-text
article level
Full-text article
level
Non-article
level*
(Marshall Breeding, 2014)

6. Discovery: Summon, Primo
Central, Enterprise
(F. William Chickering, 2014)

7. What are the Highly Desirable
Features of Discovery?
(F. William Chickering, 2014)

8. What are the Highly Desirable
Features of Discovery?
One-stop search for all library
resources
A discovery tool should include all library resources
in its search including the catalog with books and
videos, journal articles in databases, and local
archives and digital repository. This can be
accomplished by the unified index or federated
search, an essential component for a discovery tool.
Some of the discovery tools are described as web-
scale because of their potential to search seamlessly
across all library resources.
Faceted navigation Discovery tools should allow users to narrow down the
search results by categories, also called facets. The
commonly used facets include locations, publication
dates, authors, formats, and more.
Relevancy Relevancy results criteria should take into consideration
circulation statistics and books with multiple copies. More
frequently circulated books indicate popularity and
usefulness, and they should be ranked higher on the top
of the display. A book of multiple copies may also be an
indication of importance.
(F. William Chickering, 2014)

9. What are the Highly Desirable
Features of Discovery?
Recommendation/related materials A discovery tool should recommend resources for
readers in a similar manner to Amazon or other e-
commerce sites, based on transaction logs. This
should take the form of “readers who borrowed
this item also borrowed the following…” or a link
to recommended readings. It would be ideal if a
discovery tool can recommend the most popular
articles, a service similar to ExLibris’ bX Usage-
based Services.
Auto-completion/stemming A discovery tool is equipped with the computational
algorithm that it can auto-complete the search words
or supply a list of previously used words or phrases for
users to choose from. Google has stemming
algorithms.
Functional Requirement for Bibliographic
Retrieval (FRBR)
The latest development of RDA certainly makes a
discovery tool more desirable if it can display FRBR
relationships. For instance, a discovery tool may
display and link different versions, editions or formats
of a work, what FRBR refers to as expressions and
manifestations.
(F. William Chickering, 2014)

10. Why are these Features Highly
Desirable?
 User’s searching experience particularly improves in FIVE
areas:
 Searching
 Relevancy
 Search refinements
 Use of data from the local library catalogue
 Use of discovered content

11. Why are these Features Highly
Desirable?
Convenience Effectiveness
Efficiency
Search & Retrieval
Reliability

12. How do these Features Impact
on Users’ Experiences?
 Searching
 One-stop access interface, which is relying on a central index
of pre-harvested data, provides deep discovery of vast
scholarly collections.
 Most discovery tools do not have a recommendation system.
Instead, they have adopted different approaches. Most
discovery tools (like Summon) make recommendations from
bibliographic data in MARC records such as subject headings
for similar items.
 But, Primo is one of the few discovery tools with a
recommendation system similar to those used by Amazon and
other Internet commercial sites. Its bX Article Recommender
Service is based on usage patterns collected from its link
resolver, SFX.

13. How do these Features Impact
on Users’ Experiences?
 Searching
 Auto-completion/Stemming is a highly useful feature that
Google excels at. When a user types in keywords in the
search box, the discovery tool will supply a list of words or
phrases that users can choose readily. Stemming not only
automatically completes the spelling of a keyword, but also
supplies a list of phrases that point to existing items. This
feature is included in Summon and Enterprise.

14. How do these Features Impact
on Users’ Experiences?
 Relevancy
 Traditionally, relevancy is uniformly based on a computer
algorithm that calculates the frequency and relative position of
a keyword (field weighting) in a record and displays the search
results based on the final score. Other factors have never
been a part of the decision in the display of search results.
 In the discussion on discovery services, relevancy based on
circulation statistics and other factors came up as a
desirable possibility and make the relevancy ranking even
more sophisticated.
 Primo’s popularity ranking is calculated by use, meaning that
the more an item record has been clicked and viewed, the
more popular it is.

15. How do these Features Impact
on Users’ Experiences?
 Search refinements
 Faceted navigation allows users to further divide search
results into subsets based on pre-determined terms. It is highly
configurable as many discovery tools allow libraries to decide
on their own facets.
 Summon and Enterprise users relied heavily on the
refinements (like book, journal article), making use of them
most often as a post-search refinement technique. They allow
for facet types to be both included and excluded.

16. How do these Features Impact
on Users’ Experiences?
 Use of data from the local library catalogue
 The ability to add library catalog data as well as retrieve and
display call numbers, locations, and real-time availability
information on the results list.
 This customer-oriented approach benefits to users who are
looking for all information related to their search request.

17. How do these Features Impact
on Users’ Experiences?
 Use of discovered content
 FRBR relationship among work, manifestation, expression,
and items. For instance, a search will not only retrieve a title,
but different editions and formats of the work.
 So far, most discovery tools are not capable of displaying the
manifestations and expressions of a work in a meaningful way.
 Primo can display FRBR relationship.

18. Opportunities for Future
Enhancements in Discovery
Services
 Expectations regarding Application Programming Interfaces
 Expanding API Ecosystem
 Social features – communities of collaboration
 Rich media materials and collections
 Research data sets
 Discovery and access related to special collections materials
 Analytics capabilities
 Altmetrics
(Marshall Breeding, 2015)

19. Approach of Technical Services
towards Future discovery
 Effective information literacy instruction
 Examine the search histories for the use of limiters provided by
the discovery such as peer reviewed, date, language or
geography, advanced search Boolean, subject term.
 Evaluate information needs by measuring the performance of
the discovery service and which resources are retrieved as a
result of its use.
 Effective search strategy
 Support the training on users’ specific abilities to use
appropriate keywords to articulate the information needs with
discovery.
 Support the teaching on the use of available facets and limiters
as well as the skill on narrowing results when using the
discovery.

20. Approach of Technical Services
towards Future discovery
 Evaluation on discovery regularly
 The system appears to be easy to learn, teach and use.
 The facets, sort options etc. are sufficient for narrowing search
results.
 The system can properly index and display various formats.
 The system provides sufficient user functions (email, favorites,
patron requests, etc).
 The system’s article index covers the sufficient amount of the
scholarly journal subscriptions.
 The system’s technical specification is sufficient for local needs
(such as available APIs, hosting options, etc).

21. Examples & Demonstration
 Zayed University Library at
http://zu.summon.serialssolutions.com/ (Summon)
 The Open University of Hong Kong Libraries at
http://www.lib.ouhk.edu.hk/ (Primo)
 University of the Virgin Islands at
http://uvi.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/ (Enterprise)

22. References
 Anita K. Foster & Jean B. MacDonald (2013) A Tale of Two Discoveries: Comparing the
Usability of Summon and EBSCO Discovery Service, Journal of Web Librarianship, 7:1, 1-
19, DOI: 10.1080/19322909.2013.757936
 F. William Chickering & Sharon Q. Yang (2014) Evaluation and Comparison of Discovery
Tools: An Update, Information Technology and Libraries, June 2014
 Marshall Breeding (2014) Library Resource Discovery Product Profiles - Context, Library
Perspectives and Vendor Positions: Major Discovery Product Profiles, Library Technology
Reports, 50:1, 33-52, https://journals.ala.org/ltr/article/view/4753/5677
 Marshall Breeding (2015) The Future of Library Resource Discovery: A white paper
commissioned by the NISO Discovery to Delivery (D2D) Topic Committee, NISO,
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/14487/future_library_resource_disco
very.pdf
 Marshall Breeding (2016) Library Systems Report 2016 Power Plays: Commitment to
Production Products, American Libraries, https://journals.ala.org/ltr/article/view/4753/5677
 Nadine P. Ellero (2013) An Unexpected Discovery: One Library's Experience With Web-
Scale Discovery Service (WSDS) Evaluation and Assessment, Journal of Library
Administration, 53:5-6, 323-343, DOI: 10.1080/01930826.2013.876824

23. Thank You!