This document summarizes discovery service adoption rates among major library vendors. It reports that EBSCO has the largest number of subscribers to its discovery service (EDS) at 5,612 libraries. OCLC reports 1,717 libraries using WorldCat Local, and Ex Libris has licensed Primo to 1,407 libraries. The document also provides subscriber numbers for ProQuest Summon. It examines themes from user research on discovery services and outlines features and capabilities of EBSCO's EDS product.

1. JIBS Conference 2014
Make do and mend:
alternative routes to information
Engaging researchers in the Digital
Learning Space
Examples Examples Examples
What are other libraries doing?

2. Clive Wright
Vice President of Discovery Innovation
for Latin America and Europe

3. Discovery Service
Adoption Worldwide
EBSCO stands as the front-runner, with a long
lead of 5,612 library subscribers to EDS.
OCLC reports 1,717 libraries with access to
WorldCat Local, though a smaller number use
it as their primary discovery interface.
Ex Libris has licensed Primo to 1,407 libraries.
ProQuest reports 673 libraries using Summon.
American Libraries
April 15, 2014
[Marshall Breeding]
“
”

4. >6,200 ‘developers’, ‘support staff’,
‘customer satisfaction’ for EDS

5. EBSCO User Research & Design
• User Research:
– Better understand
interactions between
users and EBSCO
products (by project
or larger initiatives)
• User Design:
– A user interface that
works on all devices
– Evaluate future page
styles, configurations

6. User Research: Top 5 Recurring Themes
1. Students perform basic, not complex searches
• Students receive only small amount of information literacy training
• Most begin research from home, not in library/with librarian
2. Users scan result titles to select item(s) for detailed viewing
• Detail (abstract, subjects) valuable, but won’t click for it
• Nervous about leaving results page, not comfortable they’d get back
3. Users want access to article full text quickly; images are appealing
4. Center column (results list) gets user’s most attention
• Anxiety and some confusion, users scan looking for familiar words
• Want orienting summaries (Wikipedia style) for their topic
5. Most common research path begins with Google, then to Wikipedia
• Then eventually to EBSCOhost because professor told them Wikipedia
is not a valid/cite source
We found this
particularly
interesting…

7. Further Testing & Research on Wikipedia
Professors acknowledge the use of Wikipedia;
and students know it is NOT a trusted source
Google Wikipedia = Well-established habit
Source: Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What
We Do In Life And Business, Random House 2012
How is Wikipedia a ‘reward’?
 The summary statement
 The “gray box” (TOC)

8. Most relevant pages
in the eBook
60,000 citable
research starters
Finding the needle in the haystack
Subject
indexes

10. Anticipating User Intent Highlighting Content Library Interaction
Growing Widget, App, Plugin
Catalog

11. Raise awareness of
relevant subject specific
collections

12. Result Lists
with Assorted
Widgets

13. Result Lists
with Assorted
Widgets

14. Result Lists
with No Widgets

15. User Expectations …
(custom widget)

16. Existing Familiarity
(Springshare Integration)

17. VuFind, Blacklight, Koha, Drupal and
other EDS API app modules available
VuFind v1.x and v2.0
PHP application
EBSCO is contributing
to the open source
communities

18. Result Lists
with API

19. Result Lists
with API

20. Result Lists
with API

21. VuFind

22. VuFind

23. VuFind

26. ILS Integration within EDS

27. Click “Request This Item”

28. Folder Items View
Hover over top right folder icon

29. Folder Section with
ILS Integration
User clicks top right folder

30. ILS Integration
with multiple sites RTAC

32. ILS Integration
with multiple sites RTAC

33. • Algorhythms SLIM
• Archimedes
• aStec
• Aurora
• Bookhouse Culture & Sci Tech Co
• Booksite
• BSZ
• CALYX
• Capita
• Civica
• Concord Australia
• Cosmotron
• EOS (now part of Sirsi)
• ExLibris
• Follett
• Futurenuri
• Hyweb
• III
• Koha
• L.A. Information Technology
• Logica Czech Republic
• Lucidea/InMagic/SydneyPlus
• Mirtech Inc
• OCLC
• Pergamum
• SIABI
• SIRSIDynix
• SL IZUM
• Softlink
• Sophia / Prima
• Soutron
• SVOP
• Talis
• UNIBUS
• Vizolve
• Yordam
A sample of ILS Providers
that integrate with EDS

34. Library Homepages
University of
Ljubljana
(http://dikul.uni-lj.si)
Twitter feed

39. Search History,
Saved Searches,
Alerts

40. 40
See that the metrics for this article can be
easily embedded on a website or other
application by copying and pasting the
JavaScript code

41. 41
Search “pinsky”
pinsky

42. Relevancy andValue Ranking
42
5 Sept 2013
Resource Discovery Services
Athena Hoeppner
University of Central Florida
Relevancy is extremely
important and hard to pin
down.
• The central index is a BIG
pile of hay.
• The search and refinement
tools are rakes
• The relevancy ranking is a
magnet.

43. Relevancy andValue Ranking
• Weighted fields
• Exact match of term with
field
• Density of terms
• Currency of item
• Document type
• Document length
• Locally owned
43
5 Sept 2013
Resource Discovery Services
Athena Hoeppner
University of Central Florida

44. Superior Relevance Ranking
The system has the following priorities and has
no bias toward content from any provider:
1) Match on subject headings
from controlled vocabularies
2) Match on article titles
3) Match on author keywords
4) Match on keywords within abstracts
5) Match on keywords within full text
Exact Matches: Exact matches are favored over partial matches –
considering also the field in which those words appear (abstract vs.
full text vs. title, etc.)
Density: The number of times the word(s) appears relative to the size of
the document (more is better) – considering also the field in which those
words appear (abstract vs. full text vs. title, etc.)

45. VuFind, Blacklight, Koha, Drupal and
other EDS API app modules available
VuFind v1.x and v2.0
PHP application
EBSCO is contributing
to the open source
communities

46. EDS Course Management
Reading List Tool
Instructors stay within
their course, and can
easily add EDS content
into their courses

47. Desire2Learn
Moodle
Canvas
… Blackboard, Sakai, Pearson
eCollege, Jenzebar, and other
LTI-compliant LMS:
<http://developers.imsglobal.org/catalog.html>

50. Picking aWSD and Making ItYours
1. Know what you want to do with the service.
2. Pick the central index that aligns with your
content and has the metadata to support
discovery. Turn data sources on or off to
focus the index for your users.
3. Pick a discovery layer that can surface the
content your users want to find and that
facilitates search behavior you want to
promote.
50
5 Sept 2013
Resource Discovery Services
Athena Hoeppner
University of Central Florida

51. Thank you
Clive Wright cwright@ebsco.com
Questions?