Presentation given at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference, Seattle WA, January 2013. Discusses the ZSR Library (Wake Forest University) implementation of Serial Solution's Summon search product.

1. Letting Summon Happen at
Wake Forest University
Rosalind Tedford
Director for Research and Instruction
ALA Midwinter Meeting, Seattle | January 27th, 2013

2. Who We Are
• Private, Liberal Arts
• Winston-Salem, NC
• 7200 FTE all campuses
• 4600 undergrad
• 1.7 million volumes
• ZSR Library serves all except
Law and Med School

3. Our Summon Implementation
• Why Summon?
• Evaluation process
• Two month(ish) implementation –
July & August 2011
• Had implementation committee that made initial
decisions
• Ongoing tweaks, etc. made by smaller group
• Support email list
• Benign neglect maintenance philosophy

4. How We Use It

5. Other Uses

6. Our Statistics
Visits in 2012
85K visits
Av. 7000/month
Searches in 2012
Total: 318,713
Av. 26,559
Searches Per Visit
Between 3.5 and 4

7. Impact on Database/Full Text
July 2010 – June2011 July 2011 – June 2012
Full Text Retrievals (Before Summon) (After Summon)
ProQuest 27961 51659
EBSCOhost 113579 116612
JSTOR 129922 140388
Project MUSE 11289 8901
ScienceDirect 47766 64276
Wiley Online Library 87443 92790
SpringerLink 50069 50058
Oxford Journals 27618 31652

8. How is it REALLY Used?
• Varies from librarian to
librarian
• Varies among students
• Just now starting to look
at the Query list to learn
how our users use it
• Have to be honest about
what you expect from it
(and from your staff and
students)

9. Tweaks and Hopes for the
Future
• Removed book reviews
and newspapers from
default search after six
months
• Continue to discuss
including things like Hathi
Trust, Google Books, etc.
• Have had discussions
about splitting results out

10. General Comments
• Possible to have success without huge effort and
energy invested (but have to be realistic about what
‘success’ means)
• Tool in the toolshed – not the single answer
• Allow for flexibility for patrons and librarians in
when/how to use it
• Pick where you put your instruction effort

11. Contact Info
Rosalind Tedford
Director for Research and Instruction
ZSR Library, Wake Forest University
tedforrl@wfu.edu