Exploring discovery : the front door to your library's licensed and digitized content

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. For you, Discovery might be shorthand for single-index products such as Serials' Solutions Summon, EBSCO Discovery, and OCLC's WorldCat Discovery. Yet even those tools require adjustments to meet your institution's specific needs. With first-hand profiles of 19 library projects, 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.

Easy to dip into as needed, this comprehensive examination of discovery services will prove invaluable to IT, web development, electronic resource management, and technical services staff.

Part 1. Vended discovery systems -- Collaborative growth towards discovery : becoming stronger through change / by Margaret Heller and Hong Ma -- Approaching discovery as part of a library service platform : lessons learned / by Nathan Hosburgh -- When you rent your front door : a mid-size library's experiences relying on discovery vendors / by Stephen Bollinger and Kate Silton -- Exploring discovery @ Rosenberg Library : what happens when a library, a museum, and an archives get together to share a single discovery tool? / by T. Louise M. Kidder -- Part 2. Custom discovery systems -- Geospatial resource discovery / by Darren Hardy, Jack Reed, and Bess Sadler -- Discovery on a shoestring : implementing a full-functioned discovery tool with free software and no-extra-charge metadata sources / by Julia Bauder -- Agile open-source discovery : Blacklight with EBSCO Discovery Service / by Sam Popowich -- Using Blacklight for archival discovery / by Adam Wead and Jennie Thomas -- Creating a "magical" request and delivery experience for patrons using a Blacklight-based catalog / by Matthew Connolly, Jennifer Colt, Joanne Leary, and Melissa Wallace -- Part 3. Interfaces -- The bento box design pattern / by Jason Thomale, William Hicks, and Mark Phillips -- One-to-many : building a single-search interface for disparate resources / by Cole Hudson and Graham Hukill -- Integrating discovery to improve the user experience / by Sonya Betz and Ian Roberton -- Fixing facets / by Sean Hannan, Steven Heslip, and Kristen Johannes -- One size doesn't fit all : tailoring discovery through user testing / by Joseph Deodato, Khalilah Gambrell, and Eric Frierson -- Content and metadata -- From user stories to working code : a case study from NYU's digital collections discovery initiative / by Daniel Lovins -- Regional aggregation and discovery of digital collections : the Mountain West Digital Library / by Anna Neatrour, Rebekah Cummings, and Sandra McIntyre -- Open Access and discovery tools : how do Primo libraries manage green open access collections? / by François Renaville -- Discovery platforms and the database of record / by Alan Manifold -- Know thy metadata : metadata challenges in discovery services / by Myung-Ja K. Han and William Fletcher Weathers.