At Middlebury, we’ve been using Summon as the discovery layer for our library collections for the last several years.  The recent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education about discovery tools is an interesting read:

As Researchers Turn to Google, Libraries Navigate the Messy World of Discovery Tools

Many professors and students gravitate to Google as a gateway to research. Libraries want to offer them a comparably simple and broad experience for searching academic content. As a result, a major change is under way in how libraries organize information. Instead of bewildering users with a bevy of specialized databases—books here, articles there—many libraries are bulldozing their digital silos. They now offer one-stop search boxes that comb entire collections, Google style.

That’s the ideal, anyway. The reality is turning out to be messier.

Read the rest of the article here

Ideal lengths of tweets, facebook updates, blog posts, etc. (Hint: facebook updates – really, really short)

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