Northeastern U Trying Unified Search

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 07/22/10

In the coming year, Boston's Northeastern University will try a new search technology for its library collections. The university will work with EBSCO Discovery Service, which provides a unified, customized index of available information resources. A primary driver for the choice was Northeastern's familiarity with the EBSCOhost platform. The latter is a set of databases that provides access to reference materials for users.

"We were not satisfied with the federated search experience and wanted to provide a more streamlined way for our community to discover information in multiple resources, including our local repositories and open access content," said Associate Dean for Scholarly Resources Amira Aaron. "Northeastern students know the EBSCOhost platform and by introducing EDS we are able to provide additional content and include our catalog, all within a familiar environment, which means an easy transition for students and staff."

The institution will work with the vendor over several months to add its institutional repository and local digitized content into the discovery service, all of which will be accessible through a single search interface.

This ability to pull additional resources into the EBSCOhost system was another reason for choosing EBSCO Discovery Service, Aaron said. EBSCO provides numerous tools for achieving integration among institutional digital resources and licensed content. "We want to provide our students with as much content as possible from our discovery service and eliminate multiple silos of information, while improving access to previously underused resources." Aaron said.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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