The Summon Advisory Board is meeting in the US soon. This is an opportunity for us to provide feedback on Summon and what we would like to see changed. Some of the things on my list are:
More NZ content – (I have been having discussions with NLNZ and DigitalNZ on changing their policies to allow external harvesting by vendors as previously INNZ was reported as the most wanted database. I have also asked NLNZ to ask their vendor if we can use the NZ book covers via Summon)
More flexibility with availability – eg not saying “full text available” for print or archives
Improvements to Endnote formatting
Statistics – even the most basic ones would be better than nothing
Please add any other things that you would like to see.
Soon Summon will be loading citation information from Web of Science and the NAXOS Music Library
Also Sue McKnight said yesterday that users had reported a number of times that they did not know what MultiSearch was or what it could do for them. Please make sure that you communicate to your users that this is available, particularly academics and postgraduates as it still may be relevant for them. Some of them still seem to remember 360 search and have not tried again.
Thanks, Anne.
It would be great if the "full view only" content from Google Books could some how be incorporated but that would require some technical chantes that may be beyond the bounds of what could be negotiated at the moment…
With regards to the point about people not being aware what it is I think that will change at the point the MultiSearch becomes a default option for catalogue.
One thing that might be worth considering is making the export options more prominent some how. People seem to miss them at the moment.
A couple of technical / behavioural issues I have with Summon are (1) that the campus network is sometimes too slow and this makes it a problem for people accessing it as it is off-site. This is really one ICTS have to sort out and the sooner the better and not just for Summon. (2) People who come in to use the quick search PCs get prompted to access it as it is an external site and they need to log in. Could we set these PCs up so that they have free access to select external sites?
Another idea is manipulating the relevancy ranking so that reference materials go higher up the ranking. We pay a lot for them and they have some very good material in them but they are pretty much invisible.
Have users been told that they can access the Library Catalogue (via Summon) on a mobile phone?
Serials Solutions says: "True to the Summon service’s commitment to simplicity for users, the app is automatic: users simply point their phone’s browser at their library’s live Summon site and the app downloads instantly."
Has anyone tried this? A lot of users might like it
Deirdre
Deirdre, I’ve tried this and it is automatic. When a search is entered into the MultiSearch box from the Library homepage, the user is directed to the results via the mobile interface. There’s no need to visit a separate mobile URL.
Donna