Kankana Baishya

Assistant Librarian

National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam

Guwahati-781007

Background of the studyPurpose of the studyWhat is WDSWhy WDSContents of WDSMechanismDifference between Federated search and WDSMajor WDS service providersComparisonFinding Implementation

Background:

The search engine like Google has drastically changed the way ofusers in seeking information, where students do not necessarilyrequire quality information but rather a overview of a topic.

User needs single and simple search strategies. WDS is changingthe way users can search library resources by offering a one-stopshop.

Brings added value to the presence of the libraries in anorganization.

Improvement over federated search

Purpose: To make people aware about the ConceptTo study related issues of Discovery ServicesTo find out pros and corns of WDS.

Web scale discovery service is a single point of entry into a

library’s collections

Feature:

Unified platform to search all the resources including licensed,

open and local collections

Google like single search box

Single results list for all collections

Relevancy ranking across entire results

Connections to full text

Infrastructure, processing and indexing are maintained

remotely by the vendor

Increases exposure of the resources

Less Labour intensive

Time Saving

Single search strategy

Single interface to quality resources

Increases the usage statistics of the databases

Reduces Training sessions

Digital Collection

E Books

E Database (Open Access, Free or subscribed)

Locally developed contents(online catalogue, the

institutional repositories and its own full text

subscribed electronic content,

Content from locally developed and hosted database

Web-scale discovery: A preharvested central index featured with discovery layer

providing a single search across a library’s entire local, open access, and

subscription collections.

Central index:

Meta data index

a technology that hyperlinks to the full text of the content subscribed by the

libraries implementing these solutions.

One of the significant features discrete to web scale discovery content is its ability

to index the local collection of

Discovery layer: The user interfaces and search system for discovering,

displaying, and interacting with the content in library systems

Library Optimization:. The search interface provides multiple searching

strategies, allowing the user to refine on number of filters such as subjects covered,

peer reviewed content, full text and orients it to only library owned content. The

relevancy algorithm and ranking of results is weighed on factors such as,

keywords matching with subject and title of the content, peer review, currency and

surrogates of local print content.

Search:

Centr

al In

dex

Local content

Discovery Services

Search Results

Digital Collections

E Books

E databases

Digital Repository

Search:

Local content

Federated Search

Search Results

Digital Collections

E Books

E databases

Digital Repository

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/nikeshn/web-scale-discovery-vs-federated-search

Federated Search Discovery Service

Index No Index One unified index

Sources No limit, but it effect the

speed when more number of

connectors

Must have agreements

Information Currency Real-time return Depends on index update

Preparation Connector Development Index Development

Control Select sources Some Discovery services

provides publisher facets (

EBSCO discovery

Ebsco Discovery Service

ExLibris Primo Central Index

Serial Solution’s Summon service

OCLC’s WorldCat Local (WCL)

Ebsco has started the EDS sevice in 2008

Released publicly in 2010

Ex Libris Ltd. Has started Primo in 2005

Primo Central Index released officially in mid

2010

In 2004 Serial Solutions became a division of

Proquest

The Summon® WDS Service was initiated by

the Serial Solution in July, 2009

OCLC released initial version of World Cat Local in

November, 2007

OCLC brought out the discovery platform in 2009

Parameters EBSCO Discovery Proquest Summon ExLibris Primo OCLC WorldCat

General Features

Vendor Ebsco Serial Solution Exlibris OCLC

License Proprietary Proprietary Proprietary Proprietary

Support Vendor Vendor Vendor Vendor

Physical Features

Search boxes Y Y Y Y

chat Y Y N Y

Social networking tools and sharing Y Y Y Y

Mobile Access Y Y Y Y

Usage statistics Y Y Y Y

RSS Y Y Y Y

Indexed Content

library catalog Y Y Y Y

e-books Y Y Y Y

e-journals Y Y Y Y

Publisher’s content Y Y Y Y

Open Access Resources Y Y Y Y

Institutional Repositories Y Y Y Y

Research reports Y Y Y Y

Printed resources Y Y Y Y

Search Features

Proximity search Y Y Y Y

Truncation Y Y Y Y

Key Word Search Y Y Y Y

Boolean search Y Y Y Y

Language Search Y Y Y Y

Some important materials may missed

out in the retrieval process.

Sometimes market competitors don’t

cooperate each others

Broken links

Implementing RDS requires high

investments

IIM-Kozhikode, IIM Bangalore, IIM- Ahmedabad, IIM-

Calcutta, IIM Indore, IIM Raipur

Viswabharati, Jawaharlal Nehru University,

Indian Institute of Spice Research, Kerala, NIFTEM

(National Institute of Food Technology)

IIT, Hyderabad

IIM, Ahmedabad

A discussion was posted in LIS

Links(http://lislinks.com/forum/topics/be

st-web-scale-discovery-

service#comments) asking the best WDS

Service. And accordingly many has

suggested to go for Ebsco Discovery

Service (EDS ).

Get Trial Access for various discovery services

Integration of Library catalogue and other local

databases

Activation of Subscribed databases into central index

Syncronization with open url knowledge base

Configuration and customization of the interface

Comparison of various discovery user interfaces

Getting feed back from the users

Implementation

Have a Good day