Online library services play a vital part in providing access to library resources and services. Thus, it is very useful for library staff to know the status of these third-party services. Downtime is rare, but when staff and users need to know the availability of online services, having a library service status page can be extremely helpful. Fortunately, library vendors know this and increasingly are providing access to websites for displaying current service status and notices of planned interruptions.
Here is a list of the known major library service status pages:
bepress
bepress supports institutional repositories with Digital Commons, SelectedWorks, Expert Gallery Suite, and ExpressO online manuscript delivery service. Their website has a Current Status page that covers all of these services including status details, scheduled maintenance, and recent product updates.
On its EBSCO Help website, the company provides News and Alerts for its wide range of databases and EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS). You can enter your email address to subscribe to alerts, as well.
With the merger of Ex Libris and ProQuest, Ex Libris took over the support of all library systems and discovery services. The company has created a unified system status page for Alma, Summon, Serials Solutions 360 Link, Intota, Primo, SFX, and more.
From the OCLC Support & Training website, you can access OCLC System Alerts. This blog-like site reports current and past maintenance and issues for services including Connexion, hosted EZproxy, WorldCat, and WorldShare products.
SirsiDynix is a major library vendor with cloud-based systems such as their BLUEcloud services. The company’s status page contains notifications of scheduled maintenance and outages by region.
Springshare understands the importance of providing status information for library resources and services to library users. That’s why they created the Systems Status Dashboard in LibAnswers that allows your library to set up and display the status of your website, LibGuides, local resources, and databases. You can alert users to any planned system maintenance and explain unexpected downtime. For any LibAnswers site that has enabled the public status dashboard, you can view it by adding /systems after their LibAnswers URL. Some examples are Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Maryland Libraries, and Georgia College.
In addition to bookmarking the above sites, follow your important library vendors on Twitter. That is where they will often post the first announcements of issues and further status reports.
A discovery service is an online library searching tool that provides an all-in-one interface for finding both local library items and online subscription and open access resources.
Why learn about discovery services?
Most libraries use discovery services in addition to, or as a replacement for, their OPAC. Whether you are a technical services librarian whose job it is to administer them or a reference librarian who uses them as a major research tool, it is helpful to know how discovery services work. You need to know their features and their limitations.
The Basics
For this article, we will use Summon (with Serials Solutions) as an example. But all discovery services share the same basic functions and features. They consist of three major parts: the index, the link resolver, and the search interface.
Summon is a discovery service developed by ProQuest and now managed and supported by Ex Libris (since their merger). Summon allows users to search for print and electronic resources owned or subscribed to by their library.
In my library, Summon works in conjunction with Serials Solutions 360 Link using a Summon Unified Index to provide links to ebooks (and chapters), journal articles, audio, videos, library catalog records, institutional repositories, LibGuides, and more.
Source: http://exl-edu.com/07_Summon/Overview/Discovery/Introduction to Summon
The Summon index contains citation metadata, subject terms, abstracts, full text, and direct links (when available). It also includes Ulrichsweb information, DOIs, altmetrics, and citation counts.
Summon Indexing
The combination of Summon and Serials Solutions employs two methods of indexing applied in this order:
Summon – Index Enhanced Direct Linking (IEDL)
Serials Solutions 360 Link – OpenURL Link Resolver
Source: http://exl-edu.com/07_Summon/Overview/Discovery/Understanding the Summon Index
When you perform a search and Summon returns results, Summon first looks to see if it has a direct link to the item using its proprietary Index Enhanced Direct Linking (IEDL). These are reliable links that point specifically to the title and are successful more than 99% of the time, according to Ex Libris.
If Summon doesn’t have an IEDL record, the metadata is passed to Serials Solutions 360 Link. This is a link resolver that relies on OpenURL technology. What this means is that 360 Link must build a URL containing item search metadata in a format that the database website can use. Most broken search results links occur when either the URL is badly formed or the metadata on the database’s side is incorrect. Fortunately, Summon gives you ways to work around the problem by providing DOIs, other database choices, or links to the ebook or journal level so that you can browse to the chapter or article.
One great feature is Summon’s ability to do a full-text search for library print book holdings by indexing electronic versions of the same title, even if they aren’t owned by your library.
Relevancy Ranking and Filters
Summon then performs relevancy ranking on the results using a proprietary method that is a combination of dynamic and static ranking. Dynamic ranking includes search term frequency, field (title, author, abstract) weighting, term manipulation (synonyms, stemming, etc.), and other functions. Static ranking includes item attributes such as content type, date published, peer-review status, and citation counts. Library collection items are given a higher ranking than subscription database items.
After relevancy ranking, Summon filters search results for those items that your library has access to by default. Of course, users can see all of the relevant results by checking the “Add results beyond your library’s collection” box.
Finally, Summon offers several filters to limit results to full text, peer-review, library catalog, content type, discipline, publication date, and language.
Library Resources Management
Now that we know how Summon indexes and creates search results links, we need to know how Summon selects results that are only contained in your library’s collection. In this sense, your “collection” means both your print holdings as well as all of the online resources you own or subscribe to.
eBook and e-Journal Holdings
In order for Summon to link to your online ebook and e-journal holdings, you must tell Summon what you own or subscribe to. You do this by activating or “tracking” your holdings in Serials Solutions 360 Core, the back-end of 360 Link and interface for the ProQuest Knowledgebase. You can track entire databases, publisher collections, journal titles (with specific date ranges), and individual ebooks.
For each database you subscribe to, you might subscribe to all of the titles (if offered as a complete package) or you might subscribe to only some of the titles (if purchased individually).
If titles within a database are purchased individually, you must track those individual titles. In addition, you also might need to set custom dates if you don’t subscribe to the entire run of the journal title. If you subscribe to an entire database, new titles get added automatically when they become available. Ebook Central can also be set up to add your newly purchased ebook titles (perpetual and DDA) automatically. Otherwise, library staff must add new ebook and e-journal titles manually.
Because libraries often have unique access requirements, Serials Solutions gives you a way to customize your access URL and other details. For databases which do not have article- or ebook-level linking, you can choose to link at the database level instead. You can choose to include your proxy URL for subscribed titles or omit it for open access resources. You can include custom journal subscription date ranges. Finally, you can add custom public notes (such as login information).
Library Catalogs and Institutional Repositories
Discovery services can include records from your library catalog and institutional repository. There are several different methods for getting the local records into the Summon index.
At my library, to get our library catalog indexed, we export bibliographic and holdings records from our ILS on a periodic basis and upload them via FTP to Ex Libris. Staff at Ex Libris then add them to the Summon index (a process that can take several weeks).
For many institutional repositories, you provided Summon with access to your institutional repository metadata using Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Institutional repository content is then harvested automatically on a periodic basis (weekly for Summon).
Resources
Here are some great online resources to learn about discovery services:
The Future of Library Resource Discovery by Marshall Breeding
“A white paper commissioned by the NISO Discovery to Delivery (D2D) Topic Committee” gives an overview of the current state of library discovery services and looks into how they might adapt to the future. Published in 2015.
E-Discovery Tools and Applications in Modern Libraries edited by Egbert de Smet and Sangeeta Dhamdhere
Part of the “Advances in Library and Information Science” (ALIS) series. This book is a collection of papers covering discovery UX, e-metrics, open source, digital libraries, and library usage studies. Published in 2016.
View details and find a place to buy or borrow at Google Books.
Implementing Web-Scale Discovery Services: A Practical Guide for Librarians by JoLinda Thompson
No. 9 in the “Practical Guides for Librarians” series. From the publisher: this book is a “one-stop source for librarians seeking to evaluate, purchase, and implement a web-scale discovery service.” Published in 2014.
View details and find a place to buy or borrow at Google Books.
Web Scale Discovery Services by Jason Vaughan
This title is actually an issue of Library Technology Reports from ALA Tech Source. The report covers the content, interface, and functionality of discovery services from the major vendors to help with evaluation. Possibly a bit dated now. Published in 2011.
View details and find a place to buy or borrow at Google Books.
bepress supports institutional repositories with Digital Commons, SelectedWorks, Expert Gallery Suite, and ExpressO online manuscript delivery service. Their website has a Current Status page that covers all of these services including status details, scheduled maintenance, and recent product updates.
From the OCLC Support & Training website, you can access OCLC System Alerts. This blog-like site reports current and past maintenance and issues for services including Connexion, hosted EZproxy, WorldCat, and WorldShare products.
In addition to bookmarking the above sites, follow your important library vendors on Twitter. That is where they will often post the first announcements of issues and further status reports.
“A white paper commissioned by the NISO Discovery to Delivery (D2D) Topic Committee” gives an overview of the current state of library discovery services and looks into how they might adapt to the future. Published in 2015.
Part of the “Advances in Library and Information Science” (ALIS) series. This book is a collection of papers covering discovery UX, e-metrics, open source, digital libraries, and library usage studies. Published in 2016.
No. 9 in the “Practical Guides for Librarians” series. From the publisher: this book is a “one-stop source for librarians seeking to evaluate, purchase, and implement a web-scale discovery service.” Published in 2014.
This title is actually an issue of Library Technology Reports from ALA Tech Source. The report covers the content, interface, and functionality of discovery services from the major vendors to help with evaluation. Possibly a bit dated now. Published in 2011.