Vanderbilt University Library users can locate and access more quickly an expanding variety of resources – print, digital and electronic – thanks to the new online service DiscoverLibrary.
Over the past two years Vanderbilt partnered with Ex Libris, a leading vendor of library automation and systems software; the University of Minnesota and Denmark’s Electronic Research Library to develop Primo, which powers DiscoverLibrary.
“DiscoverLibrary goes well beyond the current concept of the library catalog,” said Jody Combs, assistant university librarian for information technology. “It contains all of the records from Acorn, the library’s current online card catalog, as well as records from the Television News Archive, the library’s largest digital collection. DiscoverLibrary can grow to contain information about all of the library’s resources, and, eventually, even campus resources that are not traditionally associated with the library catalog.” He also said that the new system is designed to be fast and intuitive with features that Web-savvy users have come to expect.
DiscoverLibrary also includes a meta-search component, a service that enables users to simultaneously search across many of the article indexes and databases to which the library subscribes. Combs said DiscoverLibrary will be the library’s most comprehensive search tool to date. “As might be expected, a service as comprehensive as DiscoverLibrary might threaten to overwhelm a user with so much information,” he said. Combs said that DiscoverLibrary assists the user by including features that deal with the problem of “information overload.”
The user can sort the results of a search with a relevancy ranking system or in order of date of publication. DiscoverLibrary also groups similar records together.
For example, a print version of a literary work might be grouped with an audio version of the same work. DiscoverLibrary also uses “faceted browsing,” a way to select subsets of large result sets by categories. Users can also launch a related search with a single click if the first search does not return helpful results. Users will know quickly if an item is accessible online, at the library or has restricted access.
DiscoverLibrary strives to provide the user the most efficient delivery route to the resource, Combs said. “For print items, this could mean presenting a form to place the item on hold or have the item delivered to an office on campus,” he said. “For electronic items, it might play a sound recording, display the full text or show a digital photograph.”
DiscoverLibrary can be found through a link on the library’s home page (www.library.vanderbilt.edu) or by going directly to http://discoverlibrary.vanderbilt.edu.
For more information, email Combs at joseph.d.combs@vanderbilt.edu.
Media Contact: Ann Marie Deer Owens, (615) 322-NEWS
annmarie.owens@vanderbilt.edu