Discovery Services and Public Libraries:

How much information is not enough?

Colleen Giles & Jennifer WilsonFairfield City Library Service

February 2015

In early 2012 Fairfield began looking for solutions to improve user access to our broad range of eResources

In May 2012 we had a demonstration of EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS)

• 15 separate products

• EBSCO and non-EBSCO

• Range of subjects and levels

• Separate eLibrary (OPAC)

What were we trying to fix?

• Low Internet & PC ownership

• 18 high schools

• “Study Hub” for tertiary students

• Existing access not “user friendly”

Our situation was this -

• 50% of residents born overseas

• 70% non-English speakers at home

• 60% aged 15+ no qualifications

• Only 9.2% have Bachelor or higher

• 25% attending educational institution

Our real challenges were these:

• Federated Search

• BiblioCommons

• LMS discovery solution

We’d been searching for an answer…

• Real time catalogue checks

• Indexing of locally harvested data

• Base Index rich content & functionality

• Indexing of full metadata for included products

• Coverage of our existing eResources

• Additional free content

So why EDS?

• Lots of documentation and forms

• Lots of meetings and emails

• Testing, testing, testing

Implementing the EDS

• Difficult to do with the EBSCO Team based in the US

• Harvesting of catalogue records easy but our LMS policies are really complicated

• Public libraries have database products not included in or not suitable for EDS

What did we learn?

Then we learnt that:

• Good user search skills maximize value

• Did not work well for Fairfield on the OPACs

• Getting Guest access set up was a challenge

• Public Library environments are more complex than most people realise

• Increase in usage statistics

• Single entry search point on library webpage

• Works very well with products in the base index and can use connectors for other products

What worked well:

• Easy to still search catalogue only or select a favourite database

• Customisation options mean flexibility

• Great asset for information services

What worked well:

• Fairfield plans to continue with the EDS

• LMS systems now integrating EDS with their own discovery layers

• Hope to include our Digital Archive in the EDS

Where to next?

We would like to thank NSW.net and SLNSW for the opportunity to trial the EDS and provide our customers with improved access to our eResources.

And EBSCO for working with us to make the EDS a good fit for our unique public library setting.