Michelle Eichelberger: This presentation today is part of our ongoing series of presentations on electronic resources and discovery.
Michelle Eichelberger: And today's session is meant to be a very broad overview of what discovery is I'll talk a little bit about the history of discovery. It's really meant as a entry level.
Michelle Eichelberger: Session for people who are fairly new to discovery. So I'm happier. I'll here, but I just didn't want you to be disappointed if this wasn't what you thought we were going to cover today. So why don't we go ahead and get started.
Michelle Eichelberger: Okay. So as I mentioned, this is going to be a top level overview. We're going to talk about what discovery searches what it doesn't search. How it searches in a movie where fulfillment content comes from. So just kind of a general discussion of what discovery is
Michelle Eichelberger: Okay so discovery is fairly new.
Michelle Eichelberger: As this quote says the card catalog lasted for more than 150 years and OCLC just printed its last catalog cards in 2015 which isn't that long ago.
Michelle Eichelberger: The early attempts to combine the OH pack and standalone databases, which is what discovery is we're very clumsy and very slow. If anyone ever tried to use metalab. It was kind of a disaster. It had to search things live. It took forever.
Michelle Eichelberger: It wasn't a very smooth product. Some of the other early discovery search systems were 360 search muse search web feet Sunni first got involved with discovery services in 2014 when we implemented the Cisco Discovery Service other discovery services used by Sunni libraries or summon
Michelle Eichelberger: And things like that.
Michelle Eichelberger: So it is fairly new Marshall breeding does a an annual library systems report and this is some information. I'm not going to read the whole thing to you but you know a little bit of information.
Michelle Eichelberger: About discovery, where we were at in 2019. One of the things that I think is most interesting about this is that
Michelle Eichelberger: The, you know, we put a lot of time and energy into our discovery systems. And I think that they are getting much better, but most researchers are really using Google Scholar.
Michelle Eichelberger: Especially higher level researchers or the standalone disciplinary databases. So we have to keep that in mind as we keep moving forward and we need to put a lot of attention into link resolves because people are not always starting at our discovery system.
Michelle Eichelberger: Here's another quote from Marshall greetings report just in terms of what systems are being most used Allah does dominate the new system selections and trailing far behind is OCLC World Share
Michelle Eichelberger: This is just a little bit of information again about the state of discovery systems in terms of purchasing
Michelle Eichelberger: Okay, so how discovery works it's dependent on vendors, it doesn't really seem like that sometimes because you're doing all the work you're putting all of that time and
Michelle Eichelberger: Energy into it. But what we're really doing is we're dependent on vendor records, whether from OCLC I know that those records are put in by real librarians, but we're being we're purchasing them from a vendor in a way
Michelle Eichelberger: And we're also dependent on vendor electronic records. So the search and fulfillment and discovery are only as good as the vendor community records that are provided or selected by the library.
Michelle Eichelberger: So this is not going to be perfect, you will have seen data issues and your standalone databases, you're going to see that same kind of problematic data in discovery. So you just have to do the best you can and hope that it all works together.
Michelle Eichelberger: Adding physical content in amo when you're adding content you're either linking to a network record that's already in the system, or you're exporting a record from OCLC or you're creating your own record.
Michelle Eichelberger: You can get records into the network other libraries may have added them usually from OCLC or from an acquisition system like Adobe or they may have done original cataloging
Michelle Eichelberger: Megan's McGee, who is currently the networks on coordinator. Make sure that the export profiles are working. She runs the jobs to make sure that the data is clean.
Michelle Eichelberger: She looks into system issues like resource resource types and for bring those kinds of things. So that's a little bit of information about how the network works. You can also locally export content from OCLC and you can put that into either the network zone or the institutions own
Michelle Eichelberger: And I put a link here to a little bit of training information about that.
Michelle Eichelberger: You can also create local records. Probably the you'd mostly want to do that for content that doesn't need to be shared with other Sunni libraries or OCLC
Michelle Eichelberger: For example, if you had a reserve item like a laptop or a calculator or, you know, things like that. You'd might just need a brief record in your system and you don't need to put it in the network song because other people won't need access to that material.
Michelle Eichelberger: So for electronic content online uses the communities on which is shared with all my customers not just Sunni
Michelle Eichelberger: There are many benefits to this. You only have to go one place to look for an activate electronic content and the best thing about it is that the content is updated for you. So as vendors send information to
Michelle Eichelberger: X Lieber office all of that content will be updated for you. You don't have to go in and make any changes to titles or URLs or if you have an aggregator package. You don't have to worry about adding titles or deleting titles.
Michelle Eichelberger: This is pretty standard. If you had a discovery system or link resolve our system in the past that is generally how it works, but it is kind of a nice thing.
Michelle Eichelberger: The drawbacks to using the community zone are that there's a ton of material in there. And sometimes it can be hard to find your version of the package, meaning that for something like psych info.
Michelle Eichelberger: There could be 10 different versions. And when you're trying to activate something
Michelle Eichelberger: You're not quite sure which one to activate and you may have to look at the vendor to make sure that you're picking the vendor that you subscribe to
Michelle Eichelberger: The communities own for Alma includes lots of local consortia collections, which is really handy that consortia can do that, but it can clutter up the system.
Michelle Eichelberger: Another problem with the Community's own is that, as I mentioned, you're dependent on the vendor records and also on actually versus processing of the vendor records.
Michelle Eichelberger: And sometimes that can fall behind a little bit so you may order something that's not in the CZ yet. So you might have to create a local portfolio and then
Michelle Eichelberger: You have to remember to add it to the CZ later, you know, connect it once, that record is finally added to this easy to go in and match that up.
Michelle Eichelberger: And I think I mentioned a couple days ago that Dora is actually trying to get better to give you information about how to do that.
Michelle Eichelberger: Another drawback to the community zone is that records might not have as much information as you'd like. They might be missing subject headings authors, etc.
Michelle Eichelberger: There's something coming. I think it came out in this or it's coming in the February release where you can add local extensions to communities on record. So that may be a way to get around some of that missing data.
Michelle Eichelberger: So what kind of things are not an Alma
Michelle Eichelberger: Out of the box or, you know, it's not going to be easy to have things like D space or New York heritage, unless you set up an import profile which is certainly doable but it's not like just picking it out of the Community zone.
Michelle Eichelberger: Same thing with live guides content you can set up an import profile to bring that material in but it's just not native to the system.
Michelle Eichelberger: If you have a site license for things like the New York Times or The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
Michelle Eichelberger: These you can set up as portfolios within a database, but it's, you know, you're not getting the same experiences browsing the site that's just not how discovery systems are meant to be used.
Michelle Eichelberger: And again, sometimes you have to wait for content to be added to the Community's own things like Films on Demand. It was added that it wasn't working right, they took it back out. So, you know, not everything is in your discovery system.
Michelle Eichelberger: Okay, so how do patrons get access to the physical and electronic content that you've added primo you may see reference to
Michelle Eichelberger: primo without the V or primo be pre movie is the version that soon he uses sometimes
Michelle Eichelberger: I know I'm guilty of this, I get lazy and I just call it primo because it's. That's what we're using, but there is actually a separate thing called primo
Michelle Eichelberger: Which was their original discovery layer and it uses a back office to manage it and some places are still using that. But anytime I'm referring to primo it's it's the primo flavor that we are using in Sunni, which is primo be
Michelle Eichelberger: So what does primo search it searches. You're on a bit Barker's and that includes both physical and electronic records. So it would be, you know, your OCLC records that you've linked to in the network zone.
Michelle Eichelberger: Any big records that are coming in from the CZ it also searches. Currently, the primo central index so
Michelle Eichelberger: If you want article level indexing or chapter level indexing. You need to make sure that those collections are active for search in the PCI so you you manually have to go in and activate things
Michelle Eichelberger: So you can search collections, whether or not you subscribe to them unless they happen to be ones that are restricted for search and there's a lot more information about how the PC I works in the discovery Training Guide, which I have linked to at the end of this presentation.
Michelle Eichelberger: Again, you want to make sure that you're allowed to search, sometimes you do have to have a subscription. They provide article chapter level indexing.
Michelle Eichelberger: If you don't turn on this search indexing. You're just going to be able to search the title, author, that kind of the brief information that's on the bid record that you've activated and Alma. So you do want to make sure to activate things in the PCI to get that
Michelle Eichelberger: more granular searching. It does take up to 10 days for new activations or D activations in the PCI
Michelle Eichelberger: All of this is going to be changing. Once we implement the CDI which is the central Discovery Index.
Michelle Eichelberger: And this is a new search system that actually versus pushing out we're planning to go live in May 2020 but we were also planning to go live in January. So I'm pretty sure this is going to happen in May, but just that that is the plan.
Michelle Eichelberger: Alright, so how does primo search you control the view, which is, you know, this the way it looks, you control the scopes and the slots. You know what you're searching HOW YOU'RE SEARCHING IT
Michelle Eichelberger: Again, I have a lot of information in the SLS s discovery Training Guide that tells you how to set that stuff up, you really have a lot of control of how you search, which is great.
Michelle Eichelberger: One of the things we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about is unexpected versus expanded searching
Michelle Eichelberger: So the out of the box default searches unexpected, meaning that you're only getting results that you have available in full text.
Michelle Eichelberger: And then there's an expand box that lets patrons choose to search beyond the full text results.
Michelle Eichelberger: You know, and if you're a community college and your most of the time your students just need a couple of articles for a short paper. This might be fine for you to use an unexpected search as your default
Michelle Eichelberger: So let's talk a little bit about the pros and cons of expanded versus unexpected searching
Michelle Eichelberger: So the current default is unexpected searching. That's how x Libra is set up our primo for everyone.
Michelle Eichelberger: The bonuses for this or that it's easy for patients to find full text content if they're only going to look at the first two pages. Anyway, it's good to have full text content there and not make them use resource sharing to request things
Michelle Eichelberger: I know that some campuses. If they had changed their default to expanded searching. Then they were getting a lot of requests there. I ll numbers were going up and it was things that students really didn't need, but they were just focused on the first couple of pages.
Michelle Eichelberger: The real problems with this unexpected searching, or that you're missing anything that's not full text. And there's a whole world of information out there that's not full text, you see that in your standalone databases.
Michelle Eichelberger: You saw that probably, you know, if you had upscale EDS as your discovery system that's sort of been the traditional way that the searching works. Unless you manually decided to switch it to only show full text right off the bat. And my concern is that
Michelle Eichelberger: People are going to be missing information that's really useful for them. So it's a training issue, you know, you can show people how to use that expand button.
Michelle Eichelberger: It's just, it's a it's a different way of doing searching
Michelle Eichelberger: I have a friend who's a professor at Geneseo and she has a particular journal that she's really interested in the past. She was able to just
Michelle Eichelberger: type in the name of the journal she'd get all the articles from that journal, even though they weren't full text because it was just part of the
Michelle Eichelberger: You know the expanded searching and now what happens is if she types in the name of that journal and primo she gets no results and then she has to expand or search to actually get to
Michelle Eichelberger: That particular thing she knows that the campus doesn't have access to it full text, but it used to be easier to be able to just pick out the article says she wanted and request them through. I ll so
Michelle Eichelberger: You know, again, it can the unexpected searching can make your ILM numbers drop, which you know if your patients are being served. That might not be a big deal, but it's something to consider.
Michelle Eichelberger: Oh, the problems with changing your to default to expand it searching. Well, let's talk about the pros first so patients will get all the results and they won't miss anything.
Michelle Eichelberger: It provides the resource sharing request options right off the bat. They don't have to click on anything to get out to be able to a full search where there can then request something. And this is really good if somebody's looking for a specific article
Michelle Eichelberger: The problem with this is that if you don't carefully curate your PCI you're searching, you might get way too many results. And if the first two pages of results aren't good, then it could not be a great thing.
Michelle Eichelberger: As I mentioned, some campuses are finding that if they make their default search
Michelle Eichelberger: Expanded then their island numbers are going up too much, and it's not really things that the students really need, you know, if they kept looking on two pages three or four, they would actually get
Michelle Eichelberger: Things that would be useful for the research, but they're just not doing that. So I did hear from GCC that that was a problem. And I think, you know, they had started with default expanded search and they switched it to the unexpected just because it was causing too many problems.
Michelle Eichelberger: The CDI is going to give you a lot more results because it's going to search all of your ebook chapters and articles so
Michelle Eichelberger: If you did decide to change your search to expanded that might be a problem. So things to consider. It really needs to be a local campus decision. You know you locally are the best.
Michelle Eichelberger: You know best what your patrons need, so that's that's up for you to decide which way you want to, to set up your searching
Michelle Eichelberger: So this expand versus unexpected that I've been talking about works based on availability. But how does the system know what's available. So there are a couple of jobs that run
Michelle Eichelberger: There's a publishing to primo central job. And then there's a publishing electronic records to Central Discovery Index these both run on Wednesday.
Michelle Eichelberger: But it takes until Sunday for the changes to be fully implemented. So the problem with this is that it could take up to 10 days to see availability changes in terms of, you know, activating content or deactivating content.
Michelle Eichelberger: If you find that your publishing isn't working. After about 10 days to submit a Salesforce ticket because we have seen problems, we saw a lot more problems in the beginning when we went live, but there are still some lingering things where the, the availability isn't working correctly.
Michelle Eichelberger: This is a chart thing you've probably seen before, just gives you a little bit of information of what you should expect
Michelle Eichelberger: When you're setting up content and Alma, you know, when should it be available. When should you expect to see it in terms of Article searching. If you have the PCI collection setup so I'm not going to go into depth on this, but I hope that this is helpful.
Michelle Eichelberger: So, you know, again, with the availability publishing
Michelle Eichelberger: It's the live look up is what tells you, so
Michelle Eichelberger: Availability publishing determines whether it says available online or not, but once you get into the record the live lookup happens. And what I mean by that is
Michelle Eichelberger: You open the full record it shows you the bib information and then while you're sitting there you can see it kind of spinning and then a view online thing will pop up so
Michelle Eichelberger: That's when it's actually going out and looking and trying to match the content that's in the record with what you have an Alma to provide the linking to get to it. This is particularly for electronic resources, of course, the print material should show right away.
Michelle Eichelberger: So this is what we understand about how this works. It's searches on the ISP n or the ISS and unless there isn't one. And in that case, then it can search on title.
Michelle Eichelberger: This can cause some weird things to happen. So again, if you have any problems with this do submit a Salesforce case.
Michelle Eichelberger: What's weird about this and what took us a long time to kind of figure out how this is working. Is that
Michelle Eichelberger: If the availability publishing jobs haven't run yet, you may do a search and it may say unavailable. And then when you open the record.
Michelle Eichelberger: It does the live lookup. While it is really available. And then this language will change. So it can be confusing as to, you know, well, this says it was unavailable. But when I open it, it is there, and that all has to do with the publishing jobs.
Michelle Eichelberger: Again, if they haven't run or if they haven't run correctly, then there might be a mismatch between what the record says and what it actually has and that does affect if it appears and expanded or and expanded search
Michelle Eichelberger: Okay. So here are two examples of that live look up. So here's the information it said it was available online. And yes, it is actually available online. This view online section is where the the live lookup is happening.
Michelle Eichelberger: So that's great that's working correctly. And this one, two, it says get it. So, meaning that it's not available.
Michelle Eichelberger: And then when you look down, you can see that there is a link to get the full text, it is not available. So both of these are correct.
Michelle Eichelberger: But, you know, again, if you're publishing isn't working, right, or if it hasn't been done yet. You can see some mismatches where maybe it started out as unavailable. Once you open the record. It does look up, it's there. It changes this language.
Michelle Eichelberger: So those are the main things that I wanted to cover today. Here are some references to go learn a little bit more about this and I'm going to open it up and see if there any questions.
Check and get and it doesn't look like it.
Michelle Eichelberger: Alright, well if there aren't any questions. I really appreciate you taking the time to attend this session, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.