7:30am – 9:00am Registration and Coffee

9:00am – 9:05am Introduction; Logistics 
Speaker: Emily Alling, Marlboro College

9:05am – 10:15am Library Resource Discovery: from Local Interfaces to Web-Scale Services
Speaker: Marshall Breeding, Editor, Library Technology Guides, Independent Consultant

Marshall will give an overview of the background and recent developments in the realm of library resource discovery services. He will discuss the progression from online catalogs, to discovery interfaces, to the current genre of Web-scale discovery services. Additional issues covered will include the challenges that remain in the discovery services arena and some of the trends to expect in the next phase of development.

10:15am – 10:45am On the Road to Discovery: Implementing WorldCat Local at Norwich University
Speaker: John Holm, Electronic Resources Librarian, Norwich University

As more and more content from publishers and aggregators is added to the WorldCat Local central index and Worldcat.org, WorldCat Local is becoming an increasingly viable tool for single-search discovery across multiple content types. In this presentation I will outline how WorldCat Local functions as a flexible catalog overlay with a fully customizable search box. I will discuss the challenges encountered and lessons learned when an “All Resources” search was added to Norwich University’s WorldCat Local instance, describing the measures taken to improve the accuracy of electronic holdings and reliability of link resolution using the WorldCat Knowledge Base. Finally I will consider some possibilities for improving discovery through future enhancements to WorldCat Local.

10:45am – 11:00am Break

11:00am – 11:45am Cornell University Library Discovery and Access: From Alpha to Beta
Speakers:
Steven Folsom, Metadata Librarian, Cornell University
Maureen Morris, Reference and Instruction Librarian, Cornell University

Cornell University Library began development of a new discovery interface using Blacklight, an open source solution, in July 2012. The presenters will give their account of the current effort, detailing customizations to the interface and underlying metadata decisions that are meant to improve the discovery experience for the Cornell University community as they try to access the library’s diverse and rich collections.

11:45am – 12:15pm Summon Use at Dartmouth
Speaker: Ridie Wilson Ghezzi, Head, Research & Instruction Services, Dartmouth College

Dartmouth was one of the first libraries to incorporate Summon as a federated search tool and its use and access to its resources has evolved over the years. In this presentation I will share how students perceive this product and how the library has worked to incorporate Summon’s results into a broader arena of information tools.

12:15pm – 1:00pm Lunch

1:00pm – 2:00pm Dispelling Discovery Dilemmas: The Five College Consortial Experience
Speaker: 
Steve Bischof, Integrated Library Systems Coordinator, W.E.B. DuBois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Janet Ewing, Reference & Integrated Technologies Librarian, Mount Holyoke College
Barbara Polowy, Head of the Hillyer Art Library, Smith College

Selecting and implementing a discovery layer is a complex task that can seem daunting in any environment and even more so when you tackle it as a consortium. The Five College consortium undertook this project in the Fall of 2010 and lived to tell the tale. In this presentation we’d like to share our experiences and lessons learned through three major segments of the endeavor: selection, technical implementation, and roll-out to our campuses. Taking it chronologically, Janet will lay out the steps of our process to research, evaluate and select a product with emphasis on what we feel were some keys to our success. Next Steve will explore a few of the trickier technical aspects of getting our discovery tool running smoothly, with things to think about and questions you may want to ask. And finally Barbara will talk about some of the challenges and opportunities we faced achieving overall consensus while respecting individual campus cultures around branding, promoting and teaching with this new tool. Throughout we will try to keep a special focus on the pros and cons of working as a consortium.

2:00pm – 2:30pm Convenience and its Discontents: Information Literacy, Open Access and the New User Experience of Discovery Layers
Speaker: Pete Coco, Digital Learning Strategist and Technology Liaison for the Humanities, Wheaton College

Discovery layers spare students a very particular and frustrating task: choosing a database and navigating its likely alien interface. This very real improvement to user experience comes packaged, however, with new versions of old challenges to information literacy education and, in the long term, creates an underexamined tension with the cause of open access. Considering both the potential and the tradeoffs inherent to discovery layers, this presentation will ask, and hope to answer, three fundamental questions: why isn’t the user experience of scholarly information resources more like Google’s? Can it be and, if so, should it?

2:30pm – 3:00pm Discussion facilitated by Marshall Breeding

3:00pm Closing Remarks