Adoption and Use of Discovery Tools by Selected Academic Libraries in Zimbabwe

Discovery Tools

OCLC’s WorldCat Local, Primo from Ex Libris, EBSCO’s Discovery Service [EDS] and ProQuest’s Summon are among the main discovery systems used in most academic libraries worldwide (Hanrath and Kottman 2015, and Edwards 2015). Unlike the federated search tools, “web discovery engines work by compiling their own indexes to the major library content sources and then configuring them to match the holdings of the individual library customers and additionally incorporating some local content” (Edwards 2015). Breeding (2015: 2) described discovery interface as the “next-generation catalogs”, emerging to provide a more modern replacement to online public access catalog (OPAC) modules of integrated library systems (ILS) and there-by providing an improved end-user interface that can be used by researchers to submit queries, receive results, employ faceted navigation, and other features consistent with web-based resources. However, they should not be confused with federated search products because discovery tools promise to provide a single interface to multiple resources based on using a centralized consolidated index whereas the federated products search remotely and only give limited feedback (Yang and Wagner, 2010: 691).