A comprehensive examination of discovery services

CHICAGO — We’re in a new age of Discovery. Not of the physical world but rather one that serves up appropriate resources for your library’s researchers, thanks to advancements in handling metadata, natural language processing, and keyword searching. In “Exploring Discovery: The Front Door to Your Library's Licensed and Digitized Content,” published by ALA Editions, editor Kenneth J. Varnum and his roster of contributors offer guidance on the complete range of discovery services, from the broad sweep of vendors’ products to the fine points of specialized holdings. Topics include:

• migrating from a traditional ILS to a library services platform;
• creating a task list for usability testing of discovery;
• managing internal development requirements within the constraints of a small or mid-sized library;
• applying agile software methodology to a Blacklight implementation;
• real-world examples of usability testing, including a small liberal arts college’s implementation of VuFind;
• meeting the challenge of three different metadata formats;
• practices in the Primo community for integrating open access content into the front end;
• serving mobile users with an app and responsive Web design;
• analyzing the use of facets in search;
• using a single discovery tool across a library, museum, and archive; and
• implementing discovery with geospatial datasets.

Varnum is senior program manager for discovery, delivery, and learning analytics at the University of Michigan Library. In addition to numerous articles and chapters, he wrote “Drupal in Libraries,” and edited “The Top Technologies Every Librarian Needs to Know: A LITA Guide” and Lorcan Dempsey's “The Network Reshapes the Library.” He blogs at rss4lib.com and can be found on Twitter at @varnum.

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"Exploring Discovery: The Front Door to Your Library's Licensed and Digitized Content"

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