Google Scholar in Place of Discovery

[Cockerill, Alan]

Hi Glenn

I included it in an environmental scan of federated search offerings in maybe 2009. Certainly cost effective (especially if you have a well maintained link resolver).

At the time the major con was Google's lack of openness about what exactly was being indexed and when - librarians always want to know what titles are being indexed (or should I say, what 'databases' are covered). On that theme not having a support team you can easily contact about problems would also frustrate librarians.

Now I think the major con is Google's predilection for pulling services that don't meet whatever criteria they use to determine whether they maintain them. (Vale Reader)  http://www.maxkemman.nl/2013/09/what-if-google-killed-scholar/

The other thing that isn't quite a con but is a function I don't think is quite obvious to users is the 'All n versions' link on the bottom of each record.  Often I've found the default displaying record's link to our link resolver doesn't work but if I view all versions and try the link resolver for each I will often get a link that does work (a sure sign the original metadata wasn't parsed correctly so an ill-formed openurl has been created). Our discovery layer seems to handle deduplication better - but I like Scholar's lack of distinction between open access and subscription full text.

We do promote Scholar as an option and our link resolver referral stats indicate that Scholar does about a third of referrals to the link resolver that Summon does (remembering Summon 'direct links' to a significant chunk of fulltext, bypassing the resolver). Combined, Scholar and Summon account for 60% of all link resolver referrals.

Cheers, Alan.


Alan Cockerill
Library Technologies Coordinator
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James Cook University PO Box 6811 CAIRNS QLD 4870 AUSTRALIA
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From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ferdman, Glenn
Sent: Thursday, 7 November 2013 1:23 PM
To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Google Scholar in Place of Discovery

Hi, Has anyone implemented Google Scholar in place of a commercial discovery service? If so, what have been the pros / cons?

If you've considered doing so, but decided against it, why?

Thanks in advance for your replies.
Glenn

Glenn Ferdman, MLS
Director of Library Services
Park University
8700 NW River Park Dr., Box 61
Parkville, MO 64152
P: (816) 584-6707
F: (816) 741-4911
gferdman at park.edu<mailto:gferdman at park.edu>
http://www.park.edu/
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