BOOK REVIEW
Resource Discovery for the Twenty-First Century Library Case studies and perspectives on the role of IT in user engagement and empowerment edited by Simon McLeish. BY CASSANDRA GORTON
Consisting of ten practical case-studies, Resource Discovery for the Twenty-First Century Library aims to provide library and information management professionals with a constructive and convenient asset for investigating and learning about new resource discovery technologies.
12 | iQ September 2021
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esource discovery for the TwentyFirst Century Library focuses on the academic library environment and the role of technology in enhancing resource discovery. Resource discovery is central to the activities and purpose of libraries. Why spend the time collecting and curating materials if they can’t be found by users? When you think of resource discovery, you think of Google. Since the advent of the Google search engine in 1998, users of academic library resources have dramatically changed their expectations. Users expect, and understand how, to use a Google-like discovery service - a system that searches the entirety of a library’s holdings with speed. Search queries entered into a discovery service are not advanced and rarely use Boolean operators. Users don’t look for results past the first page. This user behaviour has been largely adopted and encouraged by library discovery services, with vendors advertising products as ‘like Google’.
