Placeholder for lecture to UCL DIS students on INSTG004 on 19 October 2015.

1. Discovery Systems
Andrew Preater
Head of Library Information Systems
Library Services, Imperial College London
@preater
@imperiallibrary INSTG004

2. These slides:
x.preater.com/ucldis-discovery
Slides and notes

3. • Everything discovery in 20 mins
or less
• Cultural & technical challenges
• Thinking points
Overview

4. Imperial College London

5. “Discovery is fun”
– Salman Rushdie
Library discovery

6. • Next-generation
• Discovery layer / engine
• Resource Discovery / RDS
Note on terminology

7. • “The OPAC sucks” ca. 2006
OPACs
Smith, B. (2006) The OPAC sucks. Available at: https://youtu.be/tJD-safYEb0 (Accessed 16 October 2015)

8. “The OPAC is not the sun. The
OPAC is at best a distant planet,
every year moving farther from
the orbit of its solar system.
The user is the sun.”
– Karen G. Schneider
OPACs
Scneider, K.G. (2006) ‘The user is not broken: a meme masquerading as a manifesto’, Free Range Librarian,
June 3rd. Available at: http://freerangelibrarian.com/2006/06/03/the-user-is-not-broken-a-meme-
masquerading-as-a-manifesto/ (Accessed October 18 2015)

9. • “The OPAC sucks” ca. 2006
• Next-gen discovery 2007–
Next-gen Discovery
Breeding, M. (2010) Next-gen library catalogs. New York, NY: Neil Schuman

10. Eg. aquabrowser

11. Eg primo

12. Eg primo

13. • “The OPAC sucks” ca. 2006
• Next-gen discovery 2006–
• Resource discovery 2009–
Resource Discovery Systems
Keene, C. (2011) ‘Discovery services’, Serials, 24 (2) pp. 193-196 [Online]. DOI:10.1629/24193 (Accessed: 16
October 2015).

14. Eg primo

15. Eg primo

16. State of the art today
Discovery / search
Digital
content
LMS
bibs
Big
index
Archives
(maybe)

17. Simple example
Primo
DSpaceAlma
Primo Central
Index

18. • “The OPAC sucks” ca. 2006
• Next-gen discovery 2007–
• Big indexes 2009–
• What’s next?
Discovery

19. Challenges

20. Key challenges of discovery I
• There’s no “one stop
shop”

21. Key challenges of discovery II
• There’s no “one stop shop”
• Reworking info literacy
Cardwell, C., Lux, V., and Snyder, R.J. 'Beyond simple, easy, and fast: reflections on teaching Summon',
College & Research Libraries News, 73 (6) pp. 344-347 [Online]. Available at:
http://crln.acrl.org/content/73/6/344.full.pdf

22. [Quote from anon.
academic removed for
web version]
Changing user expectations
Preater, A.J. (2015) ‘User experience at Imperial’, EPUG-UKI, London, 5 October. Available at:
http://x.preater.com/primoux (Accessed: 18 October 2015)

23. Key challenges of discovery III
• There’s no “one stop shop”
• Reworking info literacy
• Metadata issues

24. Metadata optimisation
SHL language
coding
example

25. SHL metadata analysis
• 98,994 country of
publication
• 4,122 language codes
• 2,133 date codes

26. • Not an onward march of
‘progress’
• Systems are not neutral
• Critique: #critlib; #mashcat
Some points to think on
Leckie, G. and Buschman, J. (2010) 'Introduction: the necessity for theoretically informed critique in library
and information science', in Critical theory for library and information science, Leckie, G., Given, L.M., and
Buschman, J.E. (eds.), pp. vi-xxi. Oxford: Libraries Unlimited.