New Discovery Interface Launches

The University Libraries lunched a new discovery interface this week.  The interface, called DiscoverySearch, is based on a piece of software from AquaBrowser a leading vendor in the library marketplace.   DiscoverySearch looks deceptively simple, but it offers a very powerful way to find and access books and other materials listed in the University Libraries’ catalog.   The beauty of DiscoverySearch derives from faceted searching.  Following a keyword search, often a huge number of items display.  With DiscoverySearch, the search results can easily be refined.  For example, if a search on engineering mechanics pulls up one-hundred books but you just want electronic books, a click on a facet labelled electronic books changes the results to e-format only.   Other facets such as date, topic, series, and author work in much the same way.  A word cloud on the left side of the screen helps you locate other related materials that may be of interest.  It’s very nice and will improve your productivity.   http://ab.lib.ua-net.ua.edu/

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