June 17, 2009 (SEATTLE) – Dartmouth College Library marks a worldwide milestone with the launch of an open beta of the Summon web-scale discovery service, a groundbreaking, Google-like search of the full breadth of content found in library collections. In addition to librarians, the Summon service is now being used by students and faculty at Dartmouth College, enabling them to search the contents of the library – physical and digital – from a single search box. The Summon service has been developed by Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest.
"We’ve been eagerly awaiting the day when we could introduce our students and faculty to this single, convenient, compelling, high-yielding discovery system for our scholarly articles, newspaper entries, books, and the metadata that leads to the rest of our holdings," said David Seaman, the college’s Associate Librarian for Information Management. "To be the world’s first is exciting, but for us, the real excitement is in dramatically improving the service to our users. The Summon service empowers our users, enabling them to explore the vastness of our collection and find exactly what they’re looking for," added Cyndy Pawlek, Deputy Librarian of the College.
Another milestone awaits Serials Solutions next month when the Summon service launches commercially. To prepare, it’s adding a variety of new content providers, including more than 20 society publishers hosted on American Institute of Physics’ Scitation platform. The service now includes nearly 100 contributors, including key partners ProQuest and Gale – aggregators representing more than 4,700 publishers. Serials Solutions harvests and indexes their content, enabling fast, relevancy-ranked search results. New content providers are consistently being added to the Summon service in order to expand the breadth of content discoverable via the library.
"We are very pleased to be involved at this early stage of Serial Solutions’ new beta product," said Terry Hulbert, Director of Business Development at the American Institute of Physics. "Discoverability forms a key part of our various strategies and collaborating in this way with their new Summon service provides an opportunity for library users to search highly targeted and relevant resources through a single interface. AIP and its Scitation partners consider it critical that users of any product or service are able to discover the high value content that they publish."
The goal of the Summon service is to bring the user back to the library as the starting place for research, and provide for greater return on the library’s content investment. In addition to Dartmouth College Library, leading institutions serving as beta sites for the Summon service include Oklahoma State University, University of Calgary, University of Sydney, Claremont Colleges Library, University of Liverpool and Western Michigan University.
The Summon web-scale discovery service is hosted and built with an open API that will allow it to be used with existing library Web sites, next-generation catalogs or campus systems with low impact on staff. To learn more about the Summon service, visit http://www.serialssolutions.com/summon.
About Serials Solutions
Founded in 2000 by a librarian for librarians, Serials Solutions is the global leader in E-Resource Access and Management Services (ERAMS) that serves more than 2,000 libraries of all sizes and types. The Serials Solutions KnowledgeWorks authoritative e-resource knowledgebase is the foundation for Serials Solutions 360 e-resource access and management solution, which is the only complete and integrated solution available for libraries.
Serials Solutions also is the exclusive source for Ulrichs Global Serials Intelligence and represents the AquaBrowser Library unified discovery interface in the academic market in North America. The WebFeat federated search service recently acquired by ProQuest soon will be incorporated into the Serials Solutions family of access and discovery services.
Serials Solutions provides fast implementation, easy customization, and outstanding value to libraries throughout the world. For more information, please visit www.serialssolutions.com or call 1-866-SERIALS. Serials Solutions is a business unit of ProQuest LLC.
