Library Discovery: From Ponds to Streams

Abstract

Resource discovery in libraries has undergone a remarkable evolution over the past five years, tracking (but lagging behind) what has happened on the public Internet. As a handful of companies (Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yandex, Baidu, etc.) have emerged to provide near-universal access to public information on the Internet, there has been a rising desire within the library world for similar access to licensed content. Libraries, and libraries’ perceptions of the patrons’ needs, have led to the creation and acquisition of “web-scale” discovery services. These new services seek to amalgamate all the content a library might provide access to—the catalog, online journals, abstracting and indexing databases, institutional repositories, open access sites, and more—into a single index. Much like the big companies on the public Internet, these new services build their indexes of content and provide access.