Library Discovery: From Ponds to Oceans to Streams

Abstract

Resource discovery in libraries has undergone a remarkable evolution over the past five years. 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 online content a library might provide into one bucket. Rather than exploring focused ponds of specialized databases, researchers now swim in oceans of information. What is needed is neither ponds (too small in our interdisciplinary world) or oceans (too broad and deep for most needs), but streams -- dynamic, context-aware subsets of the whole, tailored to the researcher’s short- or long-term interests.