We just wrapped up the first session of the ALA TechSource Workshop Evaluating and Implementing Web Scale Discovery Services in Your Library with Jason Vaughan and Tamera Hanken. The presentation included some fantastic discussion, and we wanted to provide an opportunity for participants and the general public to continue that here. Do you have follow-up questions from session 1? Do you have questions you’d like to see addressed in session 2? General questions or the need for clarification? Go ahead and ask them in the comments area!
You can send the presenters questions for session 2 by e-mail if you like!
Jason: jason.vaughan-at-unlv.edu Tamera:tamera.hanken-at-unlv.edu
Here are some of the big discussion points that came up in today’s event:
- In your evaluation of the vendors, did you notice (as we have) that products from the vendor come to the top in many searches? I see the relvancy ranking as a huge issue as vendors won't share how items are ranked (relevancy algorithms).
- Are you going to implement a robust marketing campaign? We have had difficulty in marketing our discovery tool to undergraduates as we can't use Google and it is hard to explain such a service in a meaningful and memorable way.
- How do you utilize the results from the collection overlap analysis?
Also, a reminder to all of our participants--we’ll be extending next week’s session an additional 30 minutes, so the session will begin, as planned, at 2:30pm Eastern, and run through 4:30pm Eastern.
Jason’s Slides
Evaluating and Implementing Web Scale Discovery Services: Part 1