“Every­thing has been lead­ing to this”

Intro­duc­ing “Sum­mon” to do the things Joan Lip­pin­cott talked about

with your col­lec­tions today being pre­dom­i­nantly dig­i­tal (look at your sta­tis­tics), it’s more dif­fi­cult than ever to con­nect stu­dents to your resources

PQ looked very closely at how stu­dents are try­ing to dis­cover infor­ma­tion and con­tent
did “extreme ethno­graphic research” where the kids were search­ing, includ­ing into their dorm rooms
did in-person obser­va­tional research in the dorm, in the cof­fee shop, etc.
recorded ses­sions in-person with users and saw their rates of suc­cess
sur­veyed more than 10,000 users
did online focus groups

the good news about these kids is that they believe we offer the most cred­i­ble, supe­rior source (by a wide mar­gin)
also believe we have the most effi­cient search engine for them, although their behav­ior doesn’t sup­port this
and they say that, too — that they go to Google first
they’re real­is­tic about how they actual go about find­ing information

the library is increas­ingly dis­in­ter­me­di­ated from the search for infor­ma­tion, which is caus­ing the belief that the library is not the cen­ter of campus

why?
– no clear and com­pelling start­ing place (library’s pages say a lot about the library — lit­er­ally says a lot — but dif­fi­cult for end-users to find appro­pri­ate start­ing point for research)
– dif­fi­culty iden­ti­fy­ing appro­pri­ate resources (they can’t find a spe­cific resource even when they know what they’re look­ing for; we have more dig­i­tal resources than ever & it’s dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish between them)
– gen­eral lack of aware­ness of resources (the OPAC, built on the print model, has only a small por­tion of the library’s resources; they get dis­cour­aged try­ing to find things & their unwill­ing­ness to go through long lists of resources is increasing)

under­ly­ing tech­ni­cal issues pre­vent easy searches
com­pare that to “sim­ple, easy, fast” of Google and web searching

if only there was a Google-like search for libraries
wel­come to Summon

a com­pelling place for your end users to start their research to dis­cover the wealth of your resources avail­able to them
enables quick dis­cov­ery of all of your library’s dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal resources (repos­i­to­ries, data­bases, OPAC, books, ejour­nal arti­cles, etc.)
does it in a Google-like sin­gle search, very fast, very coör­di­nated, takes them into the dis­cov­ery phase very, very quickly

what is a uni­fied dis­cov­ery ser­vice?
NOT fed­er­ated search — doesn’t use con­nec­tors or trans­la­tors
it pre-harvests mas­sive amounts of data to bring them together in a sin­gle search through a sin­gle search box
pre-built, pre-coördinated

urge libraries to bring to Sum­mon every­thing Joan described in her talk
because they know what your library sub­scribes to, they can make sure your end user doesn’t get into dead ends
end users only see the things they actu­ally have access to (unlike Google Scholar)
it’s an open sys­tem with APIs — put the search box wher­ever you want
not a nextgen cat­a­log, although you could use the API in one

“I’ll believe it when I see it” (when pigs fly)

more than 40 pub­lish­ers are pro­vid­ing meta­data today
more than 50,000 jour­nals are already rep­re­sented
300+ mil­lion items indexed so far (as of today)
update ser­vice weekly with new pub­lish­ers
Gale and Pro­Quest are lead­ing the way with SerialsSolutions

also have the sup­port of Springer, SAGE, Cross­Ref, Tay­lor & Fran­cis, High­Wire (help­ing with har­vest­ing), Nature Pub­lish­ing Group, Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, Houghton Mif­flin, Acad­emy of Sci­ences, soci­ety pub­lish­ers, open access con­tent, Econ­List, Soci­o­log­i­cal Abstracts, GPO, Med­line, ERIC, Agri­cola, and more

through their use of the A&I resrouces, can still lead users to con­tent even if they don’t have a part­ner­ship with them
85% of EBSCO Aca­d­e­mic Search­Premier is avail­able via Sum­mon
64% of JSTOR
87% of Ovid

Sum­mon is in beta at Dart­mouth and Okla­homa State (since November)

DEMO!

did two quick searches
the open­ing screen is just a search box and noth­ing else
let a branded search box be your dig­i­tal pres­ence
– keep it clean and focused

can fil­ter by full text online items only
can fil­ter by peer-reviewed or schol­arly resources

will be a sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that is fully hosted

stop by their booth (#1904) to see it in action
sign up on their web­site for news about the service

Q — how is this related to AquaBrowser?
A — AB is a nextgen cat­a­log so you can bring Sum­mon con­tent into it through the Sum­mon API

Q — don’t you have 2 fed­er­ated search tools that you were com­bin­ing, and what has hap­pened to them?
A — we do, and we are, but dif­fer­ent libraries have dif­fer­ent needs; still need to offer a good fed­er­ated search prod­uct for those libraries that want one; but they believe the com­pelling start­ing point is Summon

Q — we’re talk­ing about tons and tons of data, how do you show cur­rent sta­tus?
A — pre-harvest with meta­data but click through in real-time

Q — is there a poten­tial to aggre­gate all of the col­lec­tions among libraries?
A — we’ll have to wait and see; right now, the focus is to pro­vide this Google-like, com­pelling presence

Q — for those things that aren’t in Sum­mon, is there a way to lead them to fur­ther resources?
A — yes, the screens are all very cus­tomiz­able; want to keep the open­ing screen clean, though

Q — one of the advan­tages of pre-harvesting is find­ing rela­tion­ships between things — will you be doing that instead of just pro­vid­ing facts?
A — yes, but right now it’s still just in beta; will take time

Q — ??
A — have already brought into Sum­mon the con­tents of one partner’s OPAC (didn’t say which one), so they know these pro­to­cols work

Q — is the pric­ing going to be in the “dream come true” range, too?
A — pric­ing has not yet been deter­mined, but they are aware of the issues around cost

Tags: gale, products, proquest, serials solutions, summon