summon and the art of discovery
DESCRIPTION
Brown, Christopher C. “Summon and the Art of Discovery.” Presentation given at the Serials Solutions Western Regional Meeting, 14 September 2012, Aurora, CO.TRANSCRIPT
SUMMON AND THE ART OF DISCOVERYChristopher C. Brown
University of Denver, Penrose Library
Sept. 14, 2012
QUESTIONS I AM ASKED
Why doesn’t your library have any books on my topic?
Why does Google / Google Scholar / Google Books have so much on my topic, but your library has so little?
THE INFORMATION ACCESS ANOMALY
Book (average) Journal Article (average)
Google (Scholar/Books)
Typical Length - full text (FT)
200 pages x 400 = 80,000 words
15 pages x 400 = 6,000 words
Surrogate Record (SR)
50-100 words (75 ave.)
300-500 words (400 ave. 1)
SR to FT ratio 1 to 10,666 1 to 15 1 to 1
1 http://www.writersservices.com/wps/p_word_count.htm
What this chart means: even though University of Denver owns over 1.5 million books, students have the feeling that we don’t own any books on their topics.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
c. 1900 – 2000s Card catalog access Lookups by left-anchored terms, no keyword searching for books
1990s – 2000s Online catalog access Lookups of catalog records by keywords anywhere in author, title, subject or notes fields
Now Discovery tools Lookups possible in some cases by words anywhere in full text of work
THINKING ABOUT SEARCH MODELS
SHIFT IN TERMS
What I call “broadcast searching” vendors typically call “federated searching.” Actually it is not federated searching at all. It is broadcast searching with a federation of results.
When the true “federated searching” came about, vendors could not call it that, since they already used that term for the less-powerful broadcast searching. Thus they generally refer to this as “Web-scale discovery”, or simply “Discovery.”
Indexing: title, author, keywords, abstract
Full text of content – Every last word
Trade Journals
Magazines Scholarly JournalsDissertations
Discovery Tools
GoogleScholar
Surface Searching
Deep Searching
NewspaperseBooksPrint Books
PRODUCTS AND THEIR VENDORS
Summon – Serials Solutions (http://www.serialssolutions.com/en/services/summon/)
EDS – Ebsco (http://www.ebscohost.com/discovery)
Primo Central – ExLibris (http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/PrimoOverview)
UNIQUE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS TRIALSONLY ONE TRIAL STILL ONGOING
http://eresources.loc.gov/search~S9/?searchtype=Y&searcharg=Article+Finder
NEW SITES TO USE
Summon: http://du.summon.serialssolutions.com/
EDS: http://academic.shu.edu/libraries/db/eds/mock-lib-edsbox2.htm;
http://www.libs.uga.edu/
Primo Central: http://eresources.loc.gov/search~S9/?searchtype=Y&searcharg=Article+Finder
DIFFERING PHILOSOPHIES
Summon: no A&I records (with the exception of Web of Science); but recently started adding records for A&I (optional); no broadcast search
EDS: adds A&I records; integrates broadcast search
Primo Central: adds A&I records; integrates broadcast search
Summon does no broadcast searching; everything is in the big pot. The others seem to do a degree of broadcast searching.
RELEVANCE VS. DISCOVERYM
eta
data
Full
Text
Higher Relevance
Higher Discovery
UNIVERSITY OF DENVER SITUATIONENCORE VS. SUMMON
Books / Chapters
Harvested Materials
Articles Sum
mon
Enco
re
Strengths
Strengths
FULL TEXT SEARCH TEST 1 PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE
Armstrong, David, Theresa Marteau, Ann Gosling, and John Weinman. 1997. The place of inter-rater reliability in qualitative research: An empirical study. Sociology 31 (3): 597-606.
teams should produce separate analyses and then resolve any discrepancies, or
Title Present FT Search Success
Summon Yes (1st) Yes (quotes); Yes (quotes)
EDS Yes (7th) No; No
Primo Central Yes (1st) No; No
Google Scholar Yes (1st) No; No
The fourth analyst placed health care needs within a social welfare model
FULL TEXT SEARCH TEST 2PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE
Diamond, Catherine, Sandy Saintonge, Phyllis August, and Adeline Azrack. 2011. The development of building wellness™, a youth health literacy program. Journal of Health Communication 16 Suppl 3 (sup3): 103-18.
Title Present FT Search Success
Summon Yes (1st) No; No
EDS Yes (1st) No; No
Primo Central Yes (1st) No; No
Google Scholar Yes (1st) Yes (1st – needed quotes); Yes (7th)
in their programming. Most staff members were interested in a new healthis achieved through experiential learning with games, activities, and medical guest
FULL TEXT SEARCH 3NEWSPAPER
"Denver Expands Light Rail." The Salt Lake Tribune: A.14. Print. 1997.
Title Present FT Search Success
Summon Yes (1st) Yes (1st); Yes (1st)
EDS Yes (1st) Yes (1st); No
Primo Central No No; No
Google Scholar N/A N/A
Although Denver's light-rail transit system is but 5.3 miles long, ridership exceeds projections and is now averaging well over 15,000 tripsDenver is ready to start construction on an 8.7-mile expansion to the system
FULL TEXT SEARCH 4HATHITRUST PUBLIC DOMAIN
Public libraries : Who should pay the bills? 1978. . United States: .
Title Present FT Search Success
Summon Yes (1st) Yes (1st) – with quotes; Yes (1st) – with quotes
EDS Yes (but not HathiTrust)
No; No
Primo Central Yes (1st) No; No
Library services are in an inferior
purpose create a balanced
"TRUE BUGS HAVE PIERCING-SUCKING MOUTHPARTS"
LOC Summon YESLOC Primo Central NOLOC EDS NO
SOME TESTING
Search Summon EDS Primo Centcats 4,027,430 6,707,127 483,518 public domain 4,138,373 1,699,817 495,399intellectual freedom
1,266,499 868,675 7,472
colorado legislature
324,077 248,362 38,763
Denver light rail 184,142 41,528 10,305business plans 14,515,373 20,741,593 5,076,449
SOME TESTING FOR FT
Search Summon FT EDS FT Primo Cent FTCats 3,007,852 1,514,596 271,449public domain 3,486,754 245,313 99,127intellectual freedom
519,269 579,612 331,410
colorado legislature
170,807 73,045 34,348
Denver light rail 63,300 13,840 9,088business plans 13,251,00
9
6,374,136 4,589,429
WHAT CAN WE CONCLUDE?
Search: states
Total Results FT Results
Summon 79,928,385 77,526,648
EDS 181,905,166 45,928,232
Primo Central
36,788,443 29,748,221
EDS has more A&I sourcesSummon has more FT
Summon allows users to see all available content, but EDS and Primo Central do not. Thus, we need to do a search that pulls up something. For this comparison I searched on the word “states.”
SEARCH COMPARISONSSearch DU Catalog Search Summon Search (limited to
catalog)Google Books
I need information on tango houses and tango fashion in Paris in the 1920's
tango fashion paris 0 results 7,249 results 9,410 results
How can I find out the demographical make up of the opposition to Franco in the Spanish Civil War?
spanish civil war franco opposition 3 results 31,672 results 102,000 results
I'd like to find the percentage of the population that was wealthy during the Great Depression. I'd also like to find out how the wealthy maintained their wealth during this time period.
wealthy population great depression
0 results 70,774 results 1,340,000 results
Any thoughts as to where to look for a good definition of "special needs"?
"special needs" definition 139 results 27,216 322,000 results
SUMMON SECRETS
Blank search box – returns all Summon content. Works for facets as well.
Search beyond your library works very well for full text searching, even for selected books.
Open searching – discovery of other places’ discovery. Follow this pattern: http://xxxxx.summon.serialssolutions.com, where xxxxx is another institution’s name. http://dulaw.summon.serialssolutions.com/ http://auraria.summon.serialssolutions.com/ http://columbia.summon.serialssolutions.com/ http://dartmouth.summon.serialssolutions.com/
SUMMON IS SUPERIOR
In case you didn’t pick it up from the previous slides, in my opinion, Summon is the superior discovery service!
QUESTIONS?
Chris Brown [email protected]