This document discusses web-scale discovery services (WDS), including what they are, their key features and benefits, examples of major WDS providers, and considerations for implementation. Specifically: - WDS allows users to search a library's entire collection through a single search box, ranking results based on relevancy across sources. This is presented as an improvement over federated search. - Major WDS providers discussed include EBSCO Discovery Service, Ex Libris Primo, Serials Solutions Summon, and OCLC's WorldCat Local. - A comparison of these providers shows they index a variety of content like the library catalog, e-books, journals, and more. - The

1. Kankana Baishya
Assistant Librarian
National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam
Guwahati-781007

2. Background of the study
Purpose of the study
What is WDS
Why WDS
Contents of WDS
Mechanism
Difference between Federated search and WDS
Major WDS service providers
Comparison
Finding
Implementation

3. Background:
The search engine like Google has drastically changed the way of
users in seeking information, where students do not necessarily
require quality information but rather a overview of a topic.
User needs single and simple search strategies. WDS is changing
the way users can search library resources by offering a one-stop
shop.
Brings added value to the presence of the libraries in an
organization.
Improvement over federated search
Purpose: To make people aware about the Concept
To study related issues of Discovery Services
To find out pros and corns of WDS.

4. Web scale discovery service is a single point of entry into a
library’s collections
Feature:
 Unified platform to search all the resources including licensed,
open and local collections
 Google like single search box
 Single results list for all collections
 Relevancy ranking across entire results
 Connections to full text
 Infrastructure, processing and indexing are maintained
remotely by the vendor

5.  Increases exposure of the resources
 Less Labour intensive
 Time Saving
 Single search strategy
 Single interface to quality resources
 Increases the usage statistics of the databases
 Reduces Training sessions

6.  Digital Collection
 E Books
 E Database (Open Access, Free or subscribed)
 Locally developed contents(online catalogue, the
institutional repositories and its own full text
subscribed electronic content,
 Content from locally developed and hosted database

7.  Web-scale discovery: A preharvested central index featured with discovery layer
providing a single search across a library’s entire local, open access, and
subscription collections.
 Central index:
Meta data index
a technology that hyperlinks to the full text of the content subscribed by the
libraries implementing these solutions.
One of the significant features discrete to web scale discovery content is its ability
to index the local collection of
 Discovery layer: The user interfaces and search system for discovering,
displaying, and interacting with the content in library systems
 Library Optimization:. The search interface provides multiple searching
strategies, allowing the user to refine on number of filters such as subjects covered,
peer reviewed content, full text and orients it to only library owned content. The
relevancy algorithm and ranking of results is weighed on factors such as,
keywords matching with subject and title of the content, peer review, currency and
surrogates of local print content.

8. Search:
CentralIndex
Local content
Discovery Services
Search
Results
Digital
Collections
E Books
E databases
Digital
Repository

9. Search:
Local content
Federated Search
Search
Results
Digital
Collections
E Books
E databases
Digital
Repository

10. Source: http://www.slideshare.net/nikeshn/web-
scale-discovery-vs-federated-search
Federated Search Discovery Service
Index No Index One unified index
Sources No limit, but it effect the
speed when more number of
connectors
Must have agreements
Information Currency Real-time return Depends on index update
Preparation Connector Development Index Development
Control Select sources Some Discovery services
provides publisher facets (
EBSCO discovery

11.  Ebsco Discovery Service
 ExLibris Primo Central Index
 Serial Solution’s Summon service
 OCLC’s WorldCat Local (WCL)

12.  Ebsco has started the EDS sevice in 2008
 Released publicly in 2010

13.  Ex Libris Ltd. Has started Primo in 2005
 Primo Central Index released officially in mid
2010

14.  In 2004 Serial Solutions became a division of
Proquest
 The Summon® WDS Service was initiated by
the Serial Solution in July, 2009

15.  OCLC released initial version of World Cat Local in
November, 2007
 OCLC brought out the discovery platform in 2009

16. Parameters EBSCO Discovery Proquest Summon ExLibris Primo OCLC WorldCat
General Features
Vendor Ebsco Serial Solution Exlibris OCLC
License Proprietary Proprietary Proprietary Proprietary
Support Vendor Vendor Vendor Vendor
Physical Features
Search boxes Y Y Y Y
chat Y Y N Y
Social networking tools and sharing Y Y Y Y
Mobile Access Y Y Y Y
Usage statistics Y Y Y Y
RSS Y Y Y Y
Indexed Content
library catalog Y Y Y Y
e-books Y Y Y Y
e-journals Y Y Y Y
Publisher’s content Y Y Y Y
Open Access Resources Y Y Y Y
Institutional Repositories Y Y Y Y
Research reports Y Y Y Y
Printed resources Y Y Y Y
Search Features
Proximity search Y Y Y Y
Truncation Y Y Y Y
Key Word Search Y Y Y Y
Boolean search Y Y Y Y
Language Search Y Y Y Y

17.  Some important materials may missed
out in the retrieval process.
 Sometimes market competitors don’t
cooperate each others
 Broken links
 Implementing RDS requires high
investments

18. IIM-Kozhikode, IIM Bangalore, IIM- Ahmedabad, IIM-
Calcutta, IIM Indore, IIM Raipur
Viswabharati, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
Indian Institute of Spice Research, Kerala, NIFTEM
(National Institute of Food Technology)

20.  IIT, Hyderabad
 IIM, Ahmedabad

24. A discussion was posted in LIS
Links(http://lislinks.com/forum/topics/be
st-web-scale-discovery-
service#comments) asking the best WDS
Service. And accordingly many has
suggested to go for Ebsco Discovery
Service (EDS ).

25.  Get Trial Access for various discovery services
 Integration of Library catalogue and other local
databases
 Activation of Subscribed databases into central index
 Syncronization with open url knowledge base
 Configuration and customization of the interface
 Comparison of various discovery user interfaces
 Getting feed back from the users
 Implementation

26. Have a Good day