Assessing the Impact of Library Discovery Technology on Content Usage

UKSG, with the support of Jisc, partnered with LISU to carry out the research project: Assessing the Impact of Library Discovery Technology on Content Usage.

The final report, Impact of Library Discovery Technologies, has now been published and is available to view.

(NB: Report updated 16/12/13 to remove formatting error concerning the horizontal axis on Figures 10 and 11 which had been partially cut off.)

The project was carried out by LISU at Loughborough University, in collaboration with the Centre of Information Management, Loughborough University and Evidence Base, Birmingham City University.

Find out more here.

The project was overseen by UKSG through the UKSG Research Subcommittee and Jisc through the PALS group. UKSG staff provided support as needed.

The goals of the study were:

To evaluate the impact that library discovery technologies (such as link resolvers and web-scale resource discovery services) have on the use of academic resources
To provide evidence to determine if there is a case for (a) investment in discovery technologies by libraries and (b) engagement with library discovery technologies by publishers and others in the academic information supply chain (unless no positive impact is found, in which case to provide evidence to this effect)
To provide recommendations for actions that libraries, publishers and others in the academic information supply chain should take to engage with such technologies to best support the discovery of resources for teaching, learning and research
To identify additional research, data, discussion, initiatives or other activities required that will support the implementation of the findings of this study.

Full details of the tender are available in the tender document.

Schedule

24 April 2013 – tender released
03 June 2013, 12 noon UK time – deadline for submission of tenders
17 July 2013 – successful bidder announced
06 October 2013 – deadline for completion of project
15 November 2013 – presentation of results at UKSG Forum

Should you have any queries, please contact alison@uksg.org.