It summarizes that Primo Central includes local holdings and remote resources in its central index to provide an easy one-stop search across materials. While promising for users, libraries implementing it have mostly not yet made it the default search and are evaluating its impact on discovery and workloads. The document outlines sample questions being used to understand user experiences and implementation approaches.

1. Introducing
Primo Central
Christopher Mitchell, Mark Baggett, Tianmu Zhang

2. Definitions
 Web-Scale  Central
Discovery Index
A pre-harvested The collection
central index index of local and
coupled with a remote processed
richly featured metadata and full
discovery layer . text.

3. “PRIMO Central: Plain and Simple”

4. Basic Structure of Primo
Central Index

5. What Primo Central Index
Includes
 Local holdings
Remote hosted resources

6. Why libraries need it?
 Easy to use, one stop get all.
 Goes beyond Federated Search.
 Specialized abilities.
 Easy to manage.

7. Who are the targeted audiences?
 Undergraduate Students
 Procrastinators
 “Hardcore” Researchers

8. Rich functionalities
 Easy implement, easy customize.
 Flexible relevancy-ranking
mechanism.
 Multi-lingual support.
 Powerful full-text finding solutions.

9. Grand Valley State University
 Using the Summon service (Serials
Solutions)
 Purpose of Study: Will Summon have an
impact on the use of library resources
during its first semester of
implementation?

10. Their Findings
 Increase:
– Use of full-text resources from full-text
databases and online journal collections
– Monograph usage
 Decrease:
– Use of traditional abstracting/indexing
databases

11. Tri-University Group (TUG)
 Group includes Guelph, Waterloo,
and Wilfrid Laurier

12. Their Questions
 Does adding this index enhance the
discovery experience of our users?
 Does it impact the workload of library
staff?
 What does web-scale discovery mean
for information literacy?

13. Unresolved Issues
 Did not share results or responses.
 Provided info about how they
implemented and examples of types of
questions asked.

14. Sample Scenarios
• “Please search for the journal article title
Strategic decision-making. Could you tell
me if you find the search results easy to
understand? Why, or why not?”
• “I‟d like to draw your attention to the facet
„Expand beyond library collections‟. Before I
ask you to click on it, could you tell me
what it means to you?”

15. “Immediate Tweak”
 Changed facet order
Before: After:

16. How has it been implemented?
 Looked at 16 institutions
 The overwhelming majority:
– PRIMO Central is not the default search
option
– Options available to expand beyond
collections
– Some still in beta

17. How has it been implemented?

18. Potential Survey Questions
 How are you introducing Primo Central to
students, faculty and staff?
 What feedback have you received about Primo
Central from students, faculty, and staff?
 Why is Primo Central currently not the default
search on your library's website?
 Do you plan to make Primo Central the default
search option on your library‟s site? If so, how
and when do you plan to do so?