Serial Solutions Improves Digital Library Portal

  • By Tim Sohn
  • 03/18/13

Serials Solutions has released a new version of its digital library portal with new discovery features and interface to help in academic research. Summon 2.0, which will be available in June, was created in partnership with Arizona State University, Chalmers University of Technology, Duke University, Grand Valley State University, James Cook University, and University of Huddersfield.

The Summon discovery service, available through a software-as-a-service model, has a unified index of more than 1 billion searchable items, and provides contextual guidance and encourages engagement with librarians. It uses rich metadata and full text from a variety of sources including books and articles.

New features of Summon 2.0 include:

  • A redesigned user interface that uses responsive design, which optimizes screen layout depending on desktop, mobile, or tablet screen size;
  • Summon Topic Explorer, which includes background information on more than 50,000 topics. Appropriate for pre-researching, it provides suggested subscribed and free fully indexed research guides and related topics and recommends librarians to contact with expertise in specific areas. Librarians can customize which reference sources are available through their library;
  • Summon Scholar Profiles, which provides information on the more than 3 million authors and scholars included in ProQuest's Scholar Universe. Summon 2.0 helps link researchers with specific authors and their works;
  • Automated query expansion, which adds more keywords and spelling variations based on topic. Users can toggle this feature on and off.

For current Summon customers, there will be no additional charge for Version 2.0.

For more information, visit serialssolutions.com.

About the Author

Tim Sohn is a 10-year veteran of the news business, having served in capacities from reporter to editor-in-chief of a variety of publications including Web sites, daily and weekly newspapers, consumer and trade magazines, and wire services. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @editortim.

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