From: "Hinchliffe, Lisa W" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 8 May 2016 20:12:24 +0000

Having been on committees/task forces/working groups investigating
web-scale discovery/universal indexing databases since 2002 at my
institution ...

Discovery layer take-up seems to have occurred at quite the phenomenal
rate to me but the reality of indexing coverage is nowhere near the
vision of everything, known item searching isn't always prioritize by
the algorithms, and users still have to navigate off to the different
silos to get the full-text, dependent on link resolvers as the
mechanism for getting from citation to text, which the library still
has to subscribe to and few libraries have the full text coverage that
their users really want.

I think the discovery layer experience has improved topical searching
for patrons of many libraries but as access to full text it is just a
different starting point than a subject database ... the obstacles to
the text itself are many.

Lisa

--
Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
Professor/ Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction
University Library, University of Illinois
Urbana, Illinois 61801
[log in to unmask]

________________________________________

From: "Sowards, Steve" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 6 May 2016 01:01:52 +0000

As I follow this discussion about convenience as a factor in Sci-Hub
use, and particularly when I read about the techniques that
researchers are using to navigate among the many library "silos"
(JSTOR, Muse, etc), this question occurs to me...

To what extent are researchers having success or failure with
"discovery layer" / "discovery tool" products like Summon, Primo,
Ebsco Discovery, or the OCLC product? In theory these search tools
should gather together and disclose citation records drawn from most
(though not all) silos, but I don't believe these have been mentioned.
Is that because they have been tried but don't work (and if so, what
is it that doesn't work?), or because they have not been tried
(perhaps because not sufficiently promoted by libraries), or because
not enough libraries offer discovery tools to their users?

--Steve Sowards
MSU Libraries
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From: Fred Jenkins <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 4 May 2016 21:24:26 -0400

I agree with you that finding the full-text in a library online
journal collection can be a painful experience (I have a hierarchy
when I go to our AtoZ: JSTOR, Muse, OhioLINK EJC, publisher site,
aggregator dead last).  Of course I know what's where, because I did
the licensing for most of it.  But I don't see Google or Google
Scholar as an answer.  The searching capabilities are from the stone
age.  And Google Scholar has made it harder to find and use the
advanced search feature, which is not very advanced anyway.  I have
been doing extensive bibliographical research in multiple languages
and few options are more painful than Google.

Google is great if you just want three articles in English, but not
for anything comprehensive.

Fred W. Jenkins, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Collections and Operations, University Libraries
Professor, University Libraries and Department of Religious Studies
University of Dayton