Discovery Tools: The Next Generation of Library Research

Discovery tools are now becoming more common in the academic library landscape, and more products are now available from vendors. While librarians are advocating and promoting their use by students and faculty, they are also evaluating their searching capabilities, their usefulness, and on-going maintenance requirements. This work is geared to librarians considering the implementation of a discovery tool. As a result, it addresses the selection and implementation of such a tool, its relationship to information literacy and catalog maintenance, usability testing, and assessment. Issues such as database and catalog searching and the quality of searching queries are also addressed. A comprehensive review of the literature serves as a valuable resource. Librarians will appreciate the highly practical nature of the volume as it is enriched by a number of varied case studies.

This book was published as a special triple issue of College & Undergraduate Libraries.

John S. Spencer is Coordinator of Reference and Chair of Public Services at Foley Center Library, Gonzaga University, USA.

Christopher Millson-Martula is Director of the Library at Lynchburg College, USA.