Lamar University, one of the fastest growing universities in Texas, has implemented EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO). The university reports that EBSCO Discovery Service has delivered more scholarly content to students and has been successful in simplifying the research process by combining the university library catalog with article content into an integrated result list.
Realizing that discovery was the way of the future, Lamar University began evaluating discovery services. They wanted to pull students away from using Google for research which often resulted in taking the first results whether they are relevant or not. Karen B Nichols Coordinator of Reference Services at Lamar University says they initially turned to EBSCO because students were familiar with the EBSCO interface but they were impressed by the quality of the material in EDS. “Our students were Google fans – that one search process. What is great about EBSCO Discovery Service is that it gives students the one stop shopping experience that they want while also providing them access to reliable, relevant sources.”
EBSCO Discovery Service offers a variety of customizability options that build on the powerful EBSCOhost®platform. Lamar University was familiar with many of the customization options that they had with EBSCOhost so adapting it to EBSCO Discovery Service was easy. EDS provides customization options to make the discovery service unique such as integration of widgets and creation of subject profiles. Nichols says they have named EDS “CardinalOne Search” to correlate with their school mascot.
Nichols has also been impressed with the level of service EBSCO provides. “I think that I will always lean toward EBSCO, a company that considers their client’s needs and situation and works to accommodate those needs. I love EBSCO!”
EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box-searching made even more powerful because of the quality of its relevance and value ranking technology.
