An Empirical Review of Library Discovery Tools

Abstract

The Internet search concept has fostered an expectation that all users need to do is to feed relevant terms to a search engine to describe a topic or to ask a question, and click “search”. The search engine is then expected to return a list of possible relevant and useful results for users to choose from. Based on this search concept, library system developers have been developing and constructing software programs for library databases that manage scholarly information. These software programs are known as library discovery tools, or web-scale discovery (WSD) tools. In this article, the term “library discovery tools” is used when discussing search engines designed for the libraries, WSD is included. Library discovery tools are intended for intelligent searches for educational or research purposes. This article provides a practical analysis of available library discovery tools in context of the present-day explosion of available open search engines on the Internet. The focuses of our analysis include how discovery tools are expected to manage library collections, provide access to scholarly information content, as well as other factors, such as budgetary considerations, when choosing or adding a discovery tool for a library.