Serials Solutions, a business unit of the US-based ProQuest LLC, commemorates the anniversary of introducing the Summon service at the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter meeting in 2009. In three years, the service has grown its unified index from 200 million items to more than 800 million and built a client base from 2 beta partners to a list that now tops 400 institutions worldwide.
More than 30 percent of Association of Research Libraries’ (ARLs) members have adopted it, making it one of the most popular discovery services. The Summon service delivers one search box, one set of results, one path to the library’s most relevant content – and it continues to deliver new features aimed at exceeding expectations.
The discovery-to-delivery process was transformed by the launch of the Summon Service and early adopters recognized the user experience was far superior to other solutions. Summon supports full-text book searching of HathiTrust, ebrary and other book collections resulting in the discovery of local print materials as well as ebooks.
Agile product development methodology has enabled the company to be responsive to the marketplace and deliver new features on a frequent basis. Item-level discipline scoping provides more precision and levels of granularity, with greater accuracy, across a breadth of content and content types that cannot be replicated by other discovery tools.
The California State University (CSU) system of libraries recently adopted the Summon service based on its mission to simplify the user-driven information discovery and content delivery experience. The CSU system of libraries serves more than 440,000 students and faculty across 23 universities.
Serials Solutions is demonstrating its industry-leading technology solutions at the ongoing ALA Midwinter Conference in Dallas, Texas.
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