The Federated Searching project group met on Friday to decide whether to recommend renewing the subscription to Serials Solutions 360 Search.
Use of this search, particularly the Easy Search databases, has risen significantly (see the statistics on Camelot) since it was put on the library’s homepage.
Staff and students were surveyed in a joint survey with the Catalogue Replacement Project group and the responses were generally positive. Overall 360 Search seems to be working much as it was hoped it would, providing an easy place to start for customers who don’t know which database to search or who don’t want to have to deal with multiple databases individually, and alerting users to useful databases.
Catherine has summarised the responses and the full results can also be viewed.
Catherine is continuing to work with Serials Solutions on the white screen/speed issue and we are hopeful of a solution to the problem.
It is intended to add a connector for the Digital Library.
The project group is planning to recommend to LLT that the subscription to 360 Search is renewed. If this is accepted, it is recommended that any proposed changes to individual database connectors are discussed on Counterculture and that any major decisions are made by the Datasets group.
If you have any comments of these recommendations, please let us know by Friday.
I am pleased that we are going to renew our subscription. Quite apart from the other benefits, 360 Search has provided access to EEBO which would otherwise have lacked access through the catalogue. It is already showing significant increases in its usage statistics.
Having a connector for Digital Library will bring archives into the mainstream – has to be good.
The recommendations regarding Counterculture for operational things and the Datasets group for more strategic things seems sensible.
Oops – not Friday but interesting to note how disproportionately the databases in Easysearch option are hit upon – more than double the rest. Will make a big difference to Oxford and Cambridge Journals and may change what our most used databases are. I assume we can not default to "All Databases" for performance reasons? Also as an undergrad tool does Proquest justify a place in the Easysearch or is that not an option for some reason? Will something be displaced for Springer when that comes?
I am also suprised that Proquest is not included in the 360 databases. Why is that??
Should we put our most expensive ones in there so they get the most use?
We initially had Proquest 5000 as one of the Easy Search databases but found that it was bringing back too high a proportion of US newspaper articles and pushing other results too far down the list.
Proquest 5000 is still one of the 360 databases and is included if you do an "All Subjects" search- or can be selected from the list for those choosing their own group.
The criteria for selection was perceived usefulness and performance rather than cost but if anyone has a favourite expensive database, just put it up for discussion.
Re. Springer: I have an idea that this was mentioned at the last meeting but I can’t remember what was said so I’ll follow it up. It’s possible we may not be quite at our maximum number of connectors and could just add it but if we are at the maximum then we will need feedback about what it could replace.