Michigan's Grand Valley State University (GVSU) recently conducted an analysis of resource usage. The study revealed that the library's implementation of the Summon web scale discovery service has had a significant impact on how students connect to content and the type of content they use. The Summon service was introduced by Serials Solutions in 2009. The service allows library users to search the breadth of library collections in a single search.
Led by GVSU's Head of Collection Development Doug Way, the library compared year- over-year use of databases, journals, and link-resolvers before and after the Summon implementation. Results show that the service allows students to go directly to full-text, boosting the use of a variety of databases. The library also reported significant rise in journal usage. After Summon's implementation at the close of August 2009, GVSU's top 100 journals showed an average increase in usage of 48 percent and the top 1000 had increased usage of 82 percent. Increased usage occurs even for databases from content providers that are not participating in the Summon service, a result of the service's indexing of the same content from alternate sources.
GVSU is among the scores of libraries around the world which are embracing web scale discovery as their path to bringing students and faculty back to the library as the starting point for research. Way presented the library's findings at a webinar entitled 'The Success of Web-Scale Discovery in Returning Net-Gen Users to the Library'. The webinar was hosted by Serials Solutions and Library Journal.
Search for more Search/discovery services
