Abstract
Discovery tools have been widely adopted by academic libraries, yet little information exists that connects common practices regarding discovery tool implementation, maintenance, assessment, and staffing with conventions for research and instruction. The authors surveyed heads of reference and instruction departments in research and land-grant university libraries. The survey results revealed common practices with discovery tools among academic libraries. This study also draws connections between operational, instructional, and assessment practices and perceptions that participants have of the success of their discovery tool. Participants who indicated successful implementation of their discovery tool hailed from institutions that made significant commitments to the operations, maintenance, and acceptance of their discovery tool. Participants who indicated an unsuccessful implementation, or who were unsure about the success of their implementation, did not make lasting commitments to the technical maintenance, operations, and acceptance of their discovery tool.
Keywords
discovery tools, academic libraries, assessment, attitudes, technical support, librarians, undergraduates, faculty, assessment, information literacy, library instruction, research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2017
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Nichols, Aaron F., Emily Crist, Graham Sherriff, and Megan Allison. 2017. “What Does It Take to Make Discovery a Success?: A Survey of Discovery Tool Adoption, Instruction, and Evaluation Among Academic Libraries.” Journal of Web Librarianship 0 (0): 1–20. doi:10.1080/19322909.2017.1284632.
DOI
10.1080/19322909.2017.1284632
Notes
This is a post-print Authors’ Accepted Manuscript. The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in the JOURNAL OF WEB LIBRARIANSHIP, February 22, 2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2017.1284632.