2. Libraries have a strategic interest in the tools
and technologies that facilitate the discovery
of and access to the resources for the
communities that they serve. These tools have
seen steady advancement over recent
decades, making great strides in the scope
and depth of materials addressed and in
providing library users ever more convenient
ways to access these materials.
3. The progress seen in the successive
generations of technology beginning from
online catalogs, to metasearch tools, to the
current generation of index-based discovery
services represents an incredible
improvement. Yet many gaps remain relative
to the potential of more universal access to the
universe of content of interests to libraries and
their users and obstacles remain that impede
progress that NISO(National Information
Standards Organization) or other organization
can address.
4. Resource Discovery
-activity that involve searching for the appropriate
service, node, or data type that match the
requirements of applications such as file
sharing, Grid applications, Cloud applications
etc. The resource discovery methods can be
engineered based on various network models
including centralized, decentralized.
5. Discover Components and Categories
-The arena of library-provided resource discovery
products includes several different categories.
Each of these categories addresses a specific
cope of functionality and underlying components.
Discovery interface
Discovery interfaces, originally marketed as “next-
generation catalogs”, emerged to provide a more
modern replacement to online public access
catalog(OPAC) modules of integrated library
systems (ILS).A discovery interface includes
features such as relevancy-based search results,
faceted navigation, and other features consistent
with web based resources and these multiple
areas of functionality:
6. End-user interface, usually delivered via a
web browser, to perform tasks such as
presentation of a search box for end-user
queries, an alternative query page that presents
advanced query options able to target terms
according to structured fields, and presentation
of search results listed either in a brief form or
in full-record displays.
Interoperability with a link resolver to
present links to full text from citation records in
search results.
7. Local search and retrieval, usually through an
integrated indexing, search, and retrieval
component to collections of interest.
Ability to interactively communicate with the
library’s ILS implementation for tasks such as
determining the current availability status of
items in the library’s physical collection, to
transmitting requests for holds or recalls, and
interacting with the patron records to present
current account status, list of items charged,
fines or fees due, and to view or update
personal details.
8. Access to remote index platforms via
API(Application Program Interface) in
addition to, or instead of, targeting search
queries and receiving results from a local
index. A discovery index may also operate
directly with an external platforms that
indexes content of interest.
10. Discovery product Trend
Initial products focused on technology
o Aquabrowser, Endeca, Primo, Encore, VUFind
o Mostly locally-installed software
Current phased focused on pre-populated
indexes that aim to deliver Web-scale discover
o Summon (Serials solutions0
o Worldcat Local (OCLC)
o EBSCO Discovery Service (EBSCO)
o All hosted libraries
11. Discovery beyond Library Interfaces
Improved performance of library content
through Google Scholar.
Better exposure of library-oriented content
Better exposure of scholarly resources
Embedded tools in other campus interfaces
12. The Future of Resource Discovery
More comprehensive discovery indexes
Stronger technologies for search and retrieval
Discovery beyond library-provided interfaces
Linked Data to supplement discovery indexes
