Evaluation of a Resource Discovery Service: FindIt@Bham

Abstract

In autumn 2012, the University of Birmingham launched FindIt@Bham, a Primo-based Resource Discovery Service, after a series of focus groups with students and staff to help determine its initial configuration and customisation. This paper presents the results from a large-scale online survey and focus groups that were conducted to poll users' attitudes to the service over twelve months later, adding to a small body of research on user satisfaction with established resource discovery services. From the survey the overall level of appreciation was high with 71.13% rating FindIt@Bham to be 'Good' or 'Very Good'. The level of appreciation was compared across undergraduates, postgraduates (taught and research) and academic staff which revealed that undergraduates are the group of users most happy with the service with academic staff being least satisfied. The reasons for this discrepancy are considered, along with users' behaviour and a discussion of their perceptions of individual functional areas. The survey results led to focus group activities tailored to extract deeper information on system usage and satisfaction. From these combined activities, future customisations and developments to FindIt@Bham such as tuning of result relevancy, improved online help and additional functionality can be prioritised.

Librarians' and Information Professionals' Perspectives Towards Discovery Tools — An Exploratory Study

“…We can compare this with Hofmann and Yang (2012) who reported that the number of institutions in the US and Canada using discovery tools has almost doubled in two years from 16% to 29%. Further, in 2012 there were more than 6000 libraries in the world which had discovery tools (Bull et al, 2014), and in December 2014 there were already 7881 libraries with discovery tools (Breedind, 2014), and the number is increasing daily. Spezi et al (2013) found that 77% of academic libraries in the UK had already installed discovery tools; and another 11% were in the process of doing so.…”

“…Referring to satisfaction, Bull et al (2014), conducted a survey at the University of Birmingham, after twelve months of the library's using the Primo-based Resource Discovery Service, and found that the overall level of satisfaction was quite high with 71.13% of respondents rating it "Good" or "Very Good." The survey participants included undergraduates, postgraduates, and academic staff.…”

“…Discovery tools are Google-style search tools which provide one-box searching for all library content with a centralized consolidated index (Bull, Craft, & Dodds, 2014;Thomsett-Scott & Reese, 2012). Hofmann and Yang (2012) found that the number of institutions in the US and Canada using discovery tools had almost doubled in the last two years.…”

The benefits of resource discovery for publishers: a librarian's view

“…[11][12][13] As these tools become more embedded, this research will prove invaluable to resource discovery vendors, libraries, and publishers alike. Research Tay's second claim around the increase in full-text downloads is now being widely reported from libraries that have implemented resource discovery.…”