Can they scale? Library discovery tools and new forms of scholarly communications

Davis, Corey (2013) Can they scale? Library discovery tools and new forms of scholarly communications. In: Access Conference 2013, September 23-26, 2013, St. John's, NL. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The lately emergent discovery ecosystem is thriving, and its attendant technologies—which include discovery layers, link resolvers, and bibliographic knowledgebases—are seen by most academic libraries as essential. But as technology drives entirely new forms of scholarly communications, the systems and standards behind library discovery—including OpenURL and bibliographic knowledgebases—are showing limitations and calling into question the comprehensiveness of tools like Summon, Primo, and WorldCat Local. Hybrid journals, research data sets, and digitized special and archival collections all present unique challenges to systems built primarily around enabling discovery and access to monographs and paid-for journal articles. So how are discovery tools adapting to this new environment? This session will share the results of focused interviews with vendors of discovery products, such as Serials Solutions, Ex Libris, and OCLC, concerning the technical challenges of providing access to new forms of scholarly output. Attendees will learn the issues involved in surfacing open access research publications in centralized consolidated indices, the challenges of linking to such content, and how vendors are planning to move forward in this area. They will also be provided with a critique of the current discovery ecosystem in handling heterogeneous information resources, especially in contrast to information retrieval methodologies used at search engines like Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search.

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