Librarians and e-resource administrators at Korea University have always sought ways to enhance research information searching and provide full-text resources by balancing electronic resource service expansion with an enhanced user experience. While the majority of the researchers were accustomed to various search interfaces and portal sites through Web searching, libraries had been forced to provide limited research information service through traditional ILS. As the result, librarians at Korea University were finding that users no longer relied on the library for their research needs, turning instead to various search engines and social networking tools. Therefore, Korea University Library wanted a discovery service that could support the changing information universe.
Librarians at Korea University saw EBSCO Discovery Service as a perfect solution that satisfies the expectations of the new generation of users and researches. EDS has powerful searching capabilities, stable search results (as well as rich) and various value added services creating a true discovery experience.
After being selected as one of the first Asia regional beta testing partners of EDS in April 2010, Korea University Library uploaded its local library catalogue data and then loaded its domestic Korean language full-text academic research database in order to provide a fully operational discovery option in 2011.
Korea University Library believes that EDS will provide a new era of academic research as an information service. Librarians are looking forward to the new challenges in the areas of electronic resources management and are eager to see how users adopt it as a reference tool. Furthermore, they expect to bring users back to the library OPAC and the Digital Library through the overwhelming number of resources indexed in EDS.
The discovery service provided by EDS will be called K-eArticle. Librarians involved in the active adaptation of a discovery solution for Korea University, Mr. J.M., Cho and Mr. H.W., Park, believe that EDS will provide a single searching environment to bring together all the resources serviced from the library, an excellent user experience and an easy to learn system delivered through a familiar user experience. Finally, excellent context sensitive and integrated information delivery mechanism will be provided through various integrated solution such as existing OPAC, LinkSource and indexing of KDB.
H.W. Park says, "We understand that EBSCO as world's leading content provider will continue to practice detailed subject studies of each individual research resources to create a comprehensive research resource with deep coverage and up to date information that will support researchers. The library will continue to ensure that the current service will become the most effective tools to support research activities. The library is going to be different because EBSCO is there."
J.M. Cho says, "Korea University Library has been working with EBSCO for many years and has come to trust in its service and delivery of quality information resources to our library. EBSCO has also provided subscriptions to quality resources from global publishers. Proactive support and changes towards research database and its service has created stable integration between information providers and users. This is why EBSCO has a special reputation in the region."
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 metadata and depth and breadth of coverage.
The Base Index for EBSCO Discovery Service forms the foundation upon which each EDS subscribing library builds out its custom collection. Beginning with the Base Index, each institution extends the reach of EDS by adding appropriate resources including its catalog, institutional repositories, EBSCOhost and other databases, and additional content sources to which it subscribes. It is this combination that allows a single, comprehensive, custom solution for discovering the value of any library's collection.
The EDS Base Index is comprised of metadata from the world's foremost information providers. At present, the EDS Base Index represents content from approximately 20,000 providers in addition to metadata from another 70,000 book publishers. Although constantly growing, today the EDS Base Index provides metadata for nearly 50,000 magazines & journals, approximately 825,000 CDs & DVDs, nearly six million books, more than 100 million newspaper articles, more than 400,000 conference proceedings and hundreds of thousands of additional information sources from various source-types.
