At UKSG 2024 annual conference in Brighton (UK) we ran a sessions on discoverability from the perspective of a vendor (Clarivate), a content provider (Gale), and a librarian (Coventry). We asked participants to answer a straw poll on the discoverability of their electronic resources. The results suggested that in even with all the modern discoverability tools available most participants felt at least some or in many cases a majority of their collections were "not discoverable". We found this "discovery" interesting, and decided to explore it further in this survey, aimed specifically at librarians.
This survey explores how librarians experience and improve the discoverability of eResources - both with the library catalogue and across external services (discovery services, research assistants, content provider platforms, etc.). Your insights will help to identify the challenges, successes and future directions of eResource discoverability.
We hope to highlight the issues that effect the whole scholarly information ecosystem from content creators to content vendors through to content consumers. What are the common issues effecting each of these groups and what projects or processes will be facilitate the primary goal of each group, discoverability of collections?
This is the survey is directed towards librarians in the first instance. With the results we will survey the rest of the content sector.
The results of this survey will be shared with the community.
About us:
Will Peaden is Head of Content and Discovery at Coventry University and was for many years a cataloguer at both Aston University and the University of Warwick. He is the current chair of CILIP's Metadata and Discovery Group, a member of the UK Committee on RDA and MDG representative on the BIC Metadata Committee.
Magaly Taylor has over 15 years of experience in Discovery, Metadata, and Usage in libraries, content providers, and service providers. She has worked in various types of libraries and contributed to different metadata working groups and committees internationally. Currently, Magaly is the Discovery and Usage Manager for Gale, which is part of the Cengage Group. She is an active member of the UKSG Education Committee; in 2024, she was elected a UKSG Trustee.
Ben Johnson is a Provider Relations Analyst with Ex Libris with over 18 years experience in Knowledgebases, Discovery, and bibliographic metadata. He has been a member of the KBART Standing Committee since 2012, including two years as co-chair. Ben enjoys the collaboration and cooperation of working with both content providers and librarians to make scholarly publications more useful and discoverable for everyone.