Discovery and Discoverability

It will focus on the one hand on the increasing provision of library based web discovery engines such as Summon, EDS and Primo, which are capable of supporting concurrent searching of very large data sets, either licensed or open access, and which are now in place in almost all university libraries in the UK and which are gradually being adopted globally. There is also uptake by others such as public libraries and archives and to the general public through the "Access to Research" initiative supported by the PLS and the PA. Indeed it has been argued that such tools could eventually displace library catalogues altogether and are most certainly a significant new tool for information discovery.

At the same time there is a clear and emerging need for publishers to address the issue of how they make their content discoverable in this increasingly digital world. Ideas and applications such as semantic enhancement, linked data, taxonomies and recommender systems are being touted as solutions but need work and investment to bring about. Publishers are also implementing their own discovery systems with enhanced or domain specific functions. So what lessons are to be learned from those providing discovery engines and what must publishers do to ensure their content achieves both prominence and relevance in the digital environment.

This seminar will bring together specialists in providing and supporting discovery engines and publishers experience and guidance in delivering content. Delegates will understand more about discovery engines, how they are being deployed and used and how publishers are making their content findable in these environments. Speakers have already been agreed from the University of Huddersfield, the Publishers Licensing Society, Sage Publishing, OCLC, 67Bricks, the Architectural Association/Sirsi Dynix, Editeur, and UCL.