Category: Discovery
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How Users Search the Library from a Single Search Box
A preprint from College & Research Libraries is well worth your read, even if you're not a webmaster: How Users Search the Library from a Single Search Box (from NCSU, Cory Lown, Tito Sierra, and Josh Boyer) Abstract Academic libraries are turning increasingly to unified search solutions to simplify search and discovery of library resources. Unfortunately, very…
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Top 10 Feed & RSS Technologies of 2011
ReadWriteWeb lists their Top 10 Feed & RSS Technologies of 2011, and there are a few on the list that were new to me, so I thought I'd share. Path caught my eye, and while I need another social networking/check-in app like I need a hole in the head, I'll probably give it a try.…
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That’s what I said! (student awareness of ebook usage)
Last week I got an email from ebrary as a followup to their recent survey on ebook usage. The following paragraph caught my eye (emphasis mine), Some of the results were surprising. For instance, patron awareness of e-books has not increased over the last three years and reported usage of e-books has not increased significantly…
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A quick introduction to the concept of open access in universities
Thanks to my colleague Tim for tweeting about this short video, produced a year ago by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and McGill University Library. I wish it somehow did better job explaining how the money aspect of the equation keeps research out of the hands of some, as most of us here in…
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The Information Flaneur – a new way to browse the collection?
Here's a short article about a search engine being built by a UofC PhD student. Called VisGets, it's definitely a browsing tool, not something one would use to search for a known item. What do you think, could this work for browsing a library collection?
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Must Read: Library Technology Reports – Web Scale Discovery
Back in March I noted that the January 2011 issue of Library Technology Reports was dedicated to Web Scale Discovery Services. Well folks, I finally made the time to read that issue, and if your library is considering Web Scale Discovery you must read it too! Note that LTR is available in Academic Search Complete…
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EBSCOHost releases an iPhone app
I haven't seen a press release or anything, but someone mentioned it on Twitter last night, so I went looking and found that EBSCO has just released an iPhone app. It'll also work on an iPad, but not at full screen. So how does it work? Log in to one of your EBSCO databasese and…
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User perceptions of the academic library and how Discovery Systems can help
I wanted to wait until the final post before mentioning Jane Burke's guest 6-part series about user perceptions of the library and how Discovery Systems can help on the InfoViews blog. Jane is Senior Vice President of ProQuest and the executive sponsor of Serials Solutions (who makes Summon). In the first four posts Jane paints a…