Discovery systems
In UK Higher Education the online catalogue (OPAC) of the library system has been largely replaced by discovery services. These link to the print collection and index electronic resources (typically journal articles). As well as the library catalogue a discovery service may ‘harvest’ (usually by the OAI-PMH) metadata from other repositories. Discovery services solutions are made up of:
- A central index of electronic resources (subscription and open access)
- A knowledge base which defines what resources (including the components of a ‘package’ or resources) are subscribed to by the library
- A link (usually OpenURL) resolver to enable the authenticated an authorised library user to access subscribed resources without hitting a paywall
Who uses what discovery system
Details of which HEIs use which discovery systems is included in the Who Uses What section of the site under Who Uses What Library Technology
The main discovery services in UK HE
Whilst there are multiple discovery products available and these are listed in full on our product directory, the UK HE landscape is dominated by four core products from 3 suppliers:
- EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS)
- Summon by ProQuest (a Clarivate Company)
- Primo by Ex Libris (a Clarivate Company)
- WorldCat Discovery by OCLC