A basic service was up and running at the beginning of term (initially minus the Library Catalogue, currently still minus the Repository & federated connectors). As we only decided to go with Ebsco’s solution in June we are pretty impressed at the speed with which this system can be implemented.

Already we’ve had some useful feedback (mostly good) through word of mouth and via a link to Wallwisher, where users can say anything they like (minus swears…) about the system.  Any negative feedback seems to stem from the fact that the system’s not perfect.  And it may never be perfect for the users who want 100% coverage of our resources.  We’ll be reinforcing this message through our training and publicity for EDS.  My personal view is why keep something locked away for months when it could be providing user benefits?  I’ve been on the help desk a lot recently and each user I’ve introduced to the system agrees that it’s easy to use and for general searching is a huge improvement on searching lots of separate databases individually.  [Obviously we’ll need to do some more in-depth evaluation, and not rely solely on my anecdotal evidence…!]

The admin interface (one of our selection criteria) has also proved to be extensive in its capabilities and easy to get to grips with, plus the support from Ebsco has been regular and responsive, just as we’d hoped.

We are now about to embark on a library staff training exercise- so far, staff have shown just as much interest in how the system works behind the scenes as about how to help users search effectively.  We’ll also be involving library staff from all areas in EDS development meetings.  A full launch date is still planned for early 2012.

We are also looking at the best ways to involve more stakeholders in evaluating EDS– no firm details yet on these plans, but more free cake is high on the list of incentives…..

Anyway – at last here’s an update to let you know some outcomes of our project.

First, the real news – we’re pleased to announce we’ve chosen EBSCO Discovery Service as our Leeds Met Library resource discovery tool and we’re already a good way down the line with the implementation – hoping to go live with an initial version of EDS in mid-September.

The tender process took a while, as these things do, but it did make us consider each product at length and we believe this has helped us in making an informed decision.

The first part of this blog recorded Phase 1 of our project which enabled us to check out, in some depth, the market for resource discovery and left us in a good position for the tender preparation.   In particular, we really knew what we wanted from our end product, and how we would evaluate this.  Our Procurement Officer seemed confident that we knew what we were talking about!

As part of the tender process we sent out useful product information to stakeholders and invited them to demos from the 3 companies who tendered (EBSCO, OCLC and Serials Solutions).  The demos were pretty much an open invitation to as many interested parties as we could fit in one room, and we had some great feedback which helped us to make the final decision.

We also held a well-attended focus group (OK, so the free cakes helped a bit too…) which gave stakeholders the opportunity to try out demo versions of all 3 systems and complete an online survey to feedback their thoughts and preferences.  This was illuminating stuff – it was clear from the feedback that one product was beginning to stand out.

In the middle of all this, 5 members of the project group attended a very timely resource discovery event at the University of Huddersfield which gave us the opportunity to speak to library colleagues in other institutions about their resource discovery choices and experiences.  It was great to hear from the people who’ve already implemented these products, and, as you might imagine, it was very different from a vendor demo!  Fortunately, the outcomes of attending this event helped to reinforce the research we’d already done.

So – why did we choose EBSCO Discovery Service?  A number of factors made this system stand out for us and our specific circumstances:

Content – we already have a high percentage of EBSCO resources at Leeds Met and EDS, unsurprisingly, returns a higher proportion of relevant results from our most highly used databases.  Tests using other systems proved less successful in retrieving this content.

Good admin interface – which can be easily accessed by a wide range of staff (not just the super-techies) & from which useful usage data can be extracted.

Proven customer service track-record – EBSCO is one of the few companies we deal with who we know from experience will provide good customer service!

User interface – EDS was shown to be the preferred user interface throughout our stakeholder testing & evaluation.

Fast and simple implementation – we should have the system live and being used and evaluated (whilst still being improved/developed!) within a couple of months.

References sites – there were examples of successful existing implementations & integrations already out there, such as the University of Liverpool and Cranfield University.

As with any system implementation the project will not stop, we will just continue to evaluate and develop EDS & in 2 years’ time we will look again at what’s out there.  Things progressed so much in almost all the systems we’d researched within one year of our project, so we can’t rest on our laurels despite EBSCO being best for us at this moment in time.

As I type, others are planning the publicity, design, content and training programme for our version of EDS – exciting times – but the real test will be the user feedback, which I guess will be the subject of my next post.

We are officially in Phase II of our project!

Way back (at least it seem like that long!) on 7^th May we saw a demo of Encore from Innovative Interfaces. Group members were impressed by the style of the interface and by how customisable the system was.  We liked the disambiguation & the ‘did you mean…’ functionalities, plus the links to sites such as Yahoo Images and Meebo.

The jury was out on a couple of areas – the advanced search, which is still in development and due to be released summer2010, and in the way the results are displayed.  Some staff were really keen on the way results are split into ‘catalogue holdings’ and ‘electronic articles’ each time – something we’d not encountered with the other systems seen.  Other staff felt this was a disadvantage.  So – which is the best method of displaying the results?  There’s only one way to find out……….no, not a fight, but user testing, which comes later in this project’s lifecycle.

Next month we have a demo of Enterprise from SirsiDynix, a system which I saw in preview of at a recent SirsiDynix road-show at York St. John University.  In addition, some of us will be attending a ‘Summon’ day at the University of Huddersfield next week to hear about the implementation of Summon at both Huddersfield and Northumbria.  After this we move on to phase 2 of the project, which involves more testing and stakeholder evaluation.

latest group member

WebCat Local, which is the resource discovery/single search element claims to ‘improve web visibility of your holdings in the various WorldCat platforms, i.e. WorldCat on the open web (WorldCat.org), FirstSearch WorldCat, WorldCat for cataloguing (Connexion), WorldCat Resource Sharing and WorldCat Collection Analysis as well as via our various partners , such as Google, Google Books, Google Scholar and LibraryThing.’

This is done using a hybrid approach of a central index (which will harvest library holdings and certain licensed content) and meta-search (which searches the rest of your remote databases).  One area of the search which we’d like to see developed quickly is the ‘limit to full-text’ option, which is coming soon but not currently available.

Project team members liked the social features/functionality of the system, which OCLC hopes will make the site compelling to users.  These include user profiles,  lists (which we also thought could be utilised as a reading list system), easy permalinks (always handy to use in VLEs) and the Harvard Citation function which instantly cites an item for you (although it wasn’t in ‘our’ version of Harvard, apparently – wonder if this could be configured?).

Worldcat Identities was a great, if slightly hidden,  feature which allowed you to link to more detailed information about the author you’d encountered.  We also felt that the ability to make comparisons of holdings with either local or similar institutions through WorldCat would be helpful.

In all, quite a few pleasant surprises.  It will be interesting to follow the #JISCLMS project currently being undertaken by the Library at York St John via their blog http://yocalcat.wordpress.com/

Primo appears to integrate well with existing library catalogues (e.g. showing item availability) and institutional repositories, as well as providing a federated search for subscription databases.  We liked the sound of the features coming up in Primo 3 such as recommendations and multilingual functionality, and we’re also taking part in a webinar explaining more about the new version of Primo in the next couple of weeks.  The FRBRization of resources is also a valuable feature for us and something our users now expect, particularly when searching for both print and electronic versions of items.

As with all the systems we’re seeing, we have contacts to follow up and we’ll also be conducting user testing, as ever we are keen to pick the system that’s right for our users, not just convenient for us.

We have two more demos coming up this week, from OCLC and Encore.

a resource-discoveried-out librarian, earlier today

It’s been a while, but be assured we’ve all been very busy with resource discovery demos and every day more opportunities to see the systems in action seem to be arriving in my mailbox.  In fact, to coin one project member’s phrase, some of us are a bit ‘resource-discoveried-out’ this week!

Firstly, we took a look at what Ebsco Discovery Service could offer us.  As part of Ebsco’s ‘Complete Discovery Solution’ this system promises deep indexing and ‘quality not quantity’ in the results it delivers.   Partnerships exist with Ebsco and most of our major database/ejournal suppliers and project group members liked the familiarity of the interface and thought that our users would too (although we’ll be testing that assumption at a later stage).

Another box ticked was the wide range of search options available from quick to advanced in various configurations, which went down well with our subject librarians.

Here are some more thoughts from our Graduate Trainee -

“Well, if you’re familiar with and enjoy using the EBSCO platform, it would seem you’re on to a winner. The new EBSCO discovery service shares the same look and feel as its sibling, but incorporates a lot more utility. Whilst this is a positive from a familiarity perspective, the advantage is of course lost in the event that students have never seen an EBSCO platform before. So, how much significance should be given to the continuity in platform design for the discovery service? Well, in a truly non-committal way I’d argue it is an advantage, but a slight-one, and should certainly not be the be-all and end-all when it comes to decision making.

Ready for the clichés? On the one hand we have the ‘better the devil you know’ approach. We use EBSCO, our students use EBSCO, so why not build on this head-start by implementing the new discovery service which looks and feels the same, but is actually better? All well and good you might say, but what about the adage that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’? I’m sure everyone has an opinion on some of the quirks of EBSCO, and whilst I’m unable to determine whether these might have been ironed out, there’s surely no harm in considering a move away from the platform, familiar or otherwise. So, what’s the verdict? Well, I was quietly impressed during the demonstration and would certainly like to have a play around in the event that a trial could be arranged. “

This product has developed from a partnership between Swets and Deep Web Technologies (a US-based provider of custom, federated search solutions such as Explorit) and we were keen to see how it compared to other products seen so far. A small snag here is – as it’s so new there are no examples of successful implementations in the UK.

A demonstration of the Swets test site appeared to tick many of the boxes on our evaluation sheets, and search results were quickly delivered.  We do, however,  now need more information on how easily the system would integrate with our existing systems and on how many connectors to major databases are already available or being developed.

To give the presenter credit, she had only seen the product herself for the first time earlier in the week, but she did take all our questions on board and I expect to have more details soon!

It would be great to hear from anyone with any experiences of using DWT.

*Addendum

I’ve now had a follow-up demo of Swetswise Searcher ,via a webinar, from Abe Lederman -founder of Deep Web Technologies and Author of Federated Search Blog and Marieke Heins, from Swets in the Netherlands – who is the product manager for SwetsWise Searcher.  Abe and Marieke were able to explain the benefits of the system in more detail, including the speed in which first results appear (due to incremental searching the results from the quicker databases are displayed while the results from slower databases are still being retrieved) and the high number of results retrieved which combines with a 5-star rating system for relevance ranking.  The system has also been proved to work with SFX and EZProxy, but as I was the only group member available for the webinar I’ll be sharing my findings, and the demo sites we’ve been sent, with the project group in the near future.