Interface changes to Scout

The following interface changes to Scout are proposed:

Note: If you are interested in previewing these changes, an EDS profile has been set up for that purpose.

  1. Discipline-limited searching will display in the search options section.  Discipline-limited searching allows users to easily narrow their search by broad subject areas. This EBSCO support article provides some additional detail on how disciplines work in EBSCO Discovery Service.     
  2. Scout will default to displaying 20 results per page. As some students do not leave the first page of results, we hope that increasing the number of results per page will expose them to a greater number of resources. Increasing the number of results per page should also make paging through results less burdensome.
  3. A few months ago, EBSCO introduced an Associated Press news “carousel” that appears when a query matches videos in the Associated Press video library.APNewsCarouselBy default, this carousel displays close to the top of the results page, and also displays regardless of the Source Type(s) the user has selected. Going forward, the AP news carousel will display at the bottom of the first page, and only for appropriate Source Type facets (i.e., All, News or Video).
  4. About a month ago, EBSCO changed Search Options to display by default with our Basic Search.  We have decided to restore the Search Options to being hidden by default.  The visibility of search options can still be toggled on and off by clicking “Search Options” beneath the search bar.   Update: Based on feedback we’ve received, this change has been removed from what will be added to Scout on the 28th.  Thank you to those who took the time to provide their feedback!  ScoutSearchOptions

If you have any feedback on the above interface changes, please don’t hesitate to post a comment below. In the absence of any concerns about these changes, they will be added to the live version of Scout the afternoon of Wednesday, October 28th. Feedback on any other changes is also appreciated.

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