UKSG Resource Discovery and Delivery: Understanding the User Journey

Event Summary

The seminar starts with an overview of the user journey from discover to delivery, identifying the typical pain points that they may encounter when searching from and accessing online resources such as ejournals and ebooks. This is followed by in-depth presentations on three key areas:

• Discovery Services looks at the range of different search services, including Resource Discovery Systems, library catalogues, search engines, A&I databases, and scholarly sharing sites such as ResearchGate.
• Navigation and Linking covers technologies and standards that link users from their search results to full-text content, including persistent identifiers and DOIs, link resolvers, and OpenURLs.
• Authentication outlines the services that enable users to login to online resources such as IP access, referring URLs and Shibboleth, as well as discussing how to support a more seamless access experience for users.

Each presentation will be followed by a breakout session where delegates will work in small groups to discuss real-world troubleshooting scenarios, relating the concepts covered in the presentations to their day-to-day work, and learning from sharing practical experiences.

Who should attend

This event will be valuable to anyone responsible for supporting discovery and delivery services for e-resources, or who is seeking a basic introduction to some of the technology services that support scholarly communications. The focus is on applications in libraries, and throughout the day the speakers will address challenges faced by different types of libraries, including HE, FE and corporate.

The seminar will discuss a range of technologies supporting discovery and delivery, but it will not compare specific library systems and solutions. It will impart a practical understanding of the technological challenges and approaches to addressing them, but will not provide detailed technical solutions to specific problems.

Previous knowledge required

Some familiarity with the different types of online scholarly content may be helpful, for example ejournals, ebooks and online databases. If you are new to this area, it is may be worth first attending the UKSG Introduction to E-Resources (5th June 2019) which gives an overview of different types of resources and how they are published and provided online.

Otherwise no previous knowledge is required. In particular, please note that this is not a technical course and no programming skills are required.

Learning objectives

• Understand the key stages in the reader journey from discovery to delivery;

• Understand the key technology services, systems and standards that support discovery and delivery, and how they relate to each other;

• Be able to identify and troubleshoot some of the common problems and limitations in discovery and delivery technologies.