Tuesday, January 12, 2010

EBSCO Releases Discovery Product

In last weeks media round-up I mentioned the new federated search product from EBSCO. Here is a sample from a deeper review of the product from Information Today:

EDS (www.ebscohost.com/discovery) harvests metadata from both internal (library) and external (database vendors) sources and creates a preindexed service of impressive size and speed. Although the resulting collection is massive in size and scope, Sam Brooks, senior vice president of sales and marketing, says the fact that it is indexed directly on the EBSCOhost servers allows for exceptionally fast search response times and for the ability to leverage the familiar powerful features of the EBSCOhost user experience across all resources.

Content in EDS can include the following:

  • Detailed metadata (e.g., author-supplied abstracts, keywords, subjects, etc.) from content providers and publishers
  • Complete indexing from EBSCOhost databases to which an institution subscribes (e.g., Academic Search, Business Source, CINAHL, Historical Abstracts, etc.)
  • Complete indexing from non-EBSCOhost databases (to which a customer subscribes), including resources from Alexander Street Press, LexisNexis, NewsBank, Readex, etc.
  • Complete OPAC loaded directly into EDS (and searched along with all other EDS content); includes real-time availability checks and daily updates
  • Book jacket images, book records, entertainment records, annotations, family keys, subject headings, demand information, awards, review citations, etc., for hundreds of thousands of publications
  • Institutional archives/repositories directly loaded into EDS and searched as part of the overall experience

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