The quest for the most convenient and most comprehensive way to search all the library’s resources together continues! Some of you gave us feedback or were in focus groups last Spring about a product called World Cat Local, which allowed library users to search a single box for results in books, articles, and other formats. Our next product to test is here! EDS (EBSCO Discovery Solution) allows one box to search Furman Library’s catalog and our article databases together.
We think EDS creates a unified index of an Furmans’s library information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box. Want to know how it works? The ability to create these custom solutions is achieved by harvesting metadata from both internal (library) and external (database vendors) sources, and creating a pre-indexed service of unprecedented size and speed. Although the resulting collection is massive in size and scope, the fact that it is indexed directly on the EBSCOhost servers allows for exceptionally fast search response times, and an ease of use because our library users are already familiar with the EBSCO interface.
What do you think? Try it and let us know. Please direct your comments to Steve Richardson in Research Assistance.
