A COMPARATIVE OVERVIEW OF JOURNAL DISCOVERY SYSTEMS

CHARLESTON PRECONFERENCE

George Machovec

Associate Director

Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries

November 3, 2010

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Paper based indexing/abstracting services 1864 - Zoological Record 1876 – Need for more and improved periodical

indexes discussed at first ALA convention 1879 – Index Medicus, with hiatus in early years 1890 – H.W. Wilson produces “Readers Guide to

Periodical Literature” followed by subject specific guides in early 1900s

1907 – Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) 20th century saw explosion of subject specific

indexing/abstracting services

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

1960s saw first computer aided retrieval with systems like Index Medicus and STAR/NASA

1970s saw the first commercial timesharing systems such as Dialog, Systems Development Corporation (SDC) and BRS

Late 1980s saw move away for centralized timesharing systems CD-ROM Local loading (e.g. 1987 Wilson databases loaded

on CARL system at Arizona State University)

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

1990s – Modern day Web introduced (1993) and move away from local loading/CD-ROM in late 1990s

2000s – Proliferation of online services Early/Mid-2000s Growth of

metasearch/federated search solutions

MANY PROBLEMS WITH METASEARCH ONLY

Slow response from servers De-duplicating/selecting citations Limited number of targets or results bog-

down Many query protocols

Z39.50, customized http queries, XML gateways Inability to do true relevance ranking and

facets with only limited results returned

GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Alex Verstak and Anurag Acharya began looking at a consolidated super index

Beta launch in November 2004 – still has a “beta” designation in 2010!

A separate search island from the main Google index with some overlap

GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Additions to GS over the last few years have included “Cited by” feature which mimics ISI citation

indexing but uses Web citing instead Related articles Interaction with local link resolvers through

proactively sending holdings via an XML file Citation exporting feature Incorporation of some Google Books content Links to open access and publisher pay-per-view Patents are now included Who knows what will come out of the mind of

Google next! Oh yes, and its FREE

AND THE PROBLEM IS ---

Nobody knows exactly what is in Google Scholar

Nobody knows the overlap between Google, Google Scholar, Google Books and the other Google islands

Linking to your local resolver can be very sloppy and you only see the link to what you own

It’s not branded More local integration and control

An opening

LIBRARY DISCOVERY INTERFACES

Began with a focus on the traditional OPAC AquaBrowser Encore Primo Indigo VuFind (open source) OCLC WorldCat Local Build your own (Lucene, SOLR) etc, etc etc

After a couple of years a quick realization that we also need a solution for journal literature

COMMON DISCOVERY INTERFACES THATINCLUDE JOURNAL LITERATURE

Summon (SerialsSolutions) EBSCO Discovery Service (EDC) WorldCat Local (OCLC) Primo/PrimoCentral (Ex Libris) Encore/Encore Synergy (Innovative

Interfaces)

SUMMON - STRENGTHS

The biggest pile of stuff – >520 million citations, 6200 publishers, OA, A&I, gov docs, some aggregators

Pre-indexed all under one umbrella (most like GS) Supports OAI harvesting Supports MARC records from you local catalog Works through your local link resolver Live 2009 with >100 customers with many ARLs Google speed 80% searches < 1 second Tailored to your exact holdings through

SerialsSolutions knowledgebase API available in addition to out-of-the-box UI,

mobile UI

SUMMON - WEAKNESSES

Expensive Must maintain all subscriptions to include

within your scoped instance Missing EBSCO, JSTOR, Elsevier, specialty

databases Some metadata is thin (but trying to build

composite fuller records) Facets and limits optimized for journals with

monographs and other formats of secondary nature

Summon views no metasearch add-ons as a strength but others view it as being trapped

EBSCO EDS - STRENGTHS

Live in 2010 Complete coverage of 300+ EBSCO products,

Lexis/Nexis, JSTOR, Scopus, WoS, Readex, NetLibrary

Pricing FTE-based but less than Summon in the $18K-$70K/year

Direction linking to FT content in EBSCO and uses link resolver for outside content

Full-text searching of EBSCO content Simple and advanced searching similar to other

EBSCO products Can OAI harvest, branded, can load MARC records

with real-time availability status from OPAC, mobile UI

EBSCO EDS - WEAKNESSES

Much smaller central knowledgebase so many resources must be found in a separate panel via federated search

Does not include ProQuest, Gale and many other aggregations. Most A&I as found on EBSCO only

Very busy UI results screen but similar to traditional EBSCOhost

If you have many non-EBSCO resources most of your content will not be found in the central results panel

WORLDCAT LOCAL - STRENGTHS

Building on comprehensive collection of WorldCat cataloging

Includes 350M journal citations (FirstSearch, NetLibrary, JSTOR, 18 EBSCO files, Gale, HathiTrust, Elsevier, etc)

Real-time availability for books from local OPAC

Uses local link resolver OAI harvesting, mobile UI Reasonably priced which is FTE based $9K-

$25K/year

WORLDCAT LOCAL -WEAKNESSES

Limited branding and interface tuning UI looks clunky compared to some of the

others. Many items will need to be brought in via

federated search Problems with known-item searching Problems with book reviews showing before

the books themselves More attention is needed for relevancy

ranking and display

PRIMO/PRIMOCENTRAL - STRENGTHS

Released in June 2010 Medium pile of stuff – 250M records; outside

content via MetaLib federated search Works well for known-item searching Nicely integrated with OPAC Works with the bxRecommender service in

SFX Can scope holdings with GS XML data Nice UI with in-situ showing of details using

Ajax, API available

PRIMO/PRIMOCENTRAL - WEAKNESSES

Works best on ExLibris Aleph and Voyager implementations (works on others but may be extra work)

Base Primo pricing is $28K-$100K/year and then PrimoCentral is a bump of $7K-$15K/above that

Focus on academic libraries and scholarly material

ENCORE/ENCORE SYNERGY - STRENGTHS

Web services for real-time harvesting provides more up-to-date content

Web services is faster than traditional metasearch protocols

Can work with any content provider, content neutral

Link directly and natively to full-text Optimized for articles as well as books; local

collections are still important Can OAI harvest Integration with local system, no extra overhead Very reasonably priced (may be no cost if you

have certain other III products)

ENCORE/ENCORE SYNERGY - WEAKNESSES

Although results are super fast they still appear in separate facets

Relevancy ranking is done within each facet and there is not a screen with all results in one consolidated panel

If you have a large number of databases the separate facets may be a problem

Limited to databases that support Web services and other databases must be brought in with Research Pro via traditional metasearching

MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL

Aside from what each vendor tells you, there is no single answer for all libraries

What kind of library are you? Academic, public, special

What is your emphasis? STM, humanities, social sciences, popular

materials Is your local collection still important or is journal

literature and other information more central to your mission

MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL

How price sensitive are you? Pricing may vary due to local situations If you have no extra money use Google Scholar Encore Synergy is very reasonable if you already

use Encore EBSCO EDS is mid-range Primo is rather expensive although PrimoCentral

is only a modest bump Summon generally is the most expensive

MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL

Are you heavily invested in one vendor or a small group of providers? If you are heavily into EBSCO products then EDS

or Encore Synergy may make sense. EDS is a poor solution of if you get many non-

EBSCO eResources Summon tries to say they don’t need EBSCO

databases because they have the content otherwise but it’s just their excuse because they don’t have it

Pay close attention to what will be under the single index umbrella and what must be federated

MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL

What is your gut reaction to the UI, curbside appeal

Keeping good relations with your key vendors Do you have local expertise to play with an

API or are you happy with the vendor supplying a more complete solution

Do you want/need more than one discovery later?

Do you need one at all?