Discoverability

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Oct 08

Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President, OCLC Programs and Research and Chief Strategist, OCLC, points today to a report from the Libraries of University of Minnesota. It pertains to discoverability of authoritative content. (Download the full 160 page PDF, Discoverability Phase 1 Final Report). What jumped out at me in reviewing the executive summary were two statements, although neither perhaps should be considered as ground-breaking. The first was an identified trend -- that searchers do not distinguish between discovery and delivery. Once made aware of an item's existence, the searcher expects that the item will almost immediately be accessible in some form. The second statement related to the criticality of discovery services -- that "Google, PubMed, and the large databases and indexes account for ~75% of all SFX requests" at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Essentially, the searcher's expectation that discovery and delivery are one and the same forces a tighter integration in the library between disparate services, whether free or fee-based.

In the context of research and education, integrated discovery tools and services fuel usage of the institution's investment in content. It is the best way to guarantee a return on that investment.

OCLC is a member organization of NFAIS.