Elevating Access: Transitioning from OCLC discovery to EDS Health

Background: Discovery services are increasingly popular within the library community because of the users’ ability to conduct simply searches and receive unified results. Five years ago, the University of Louisville Libraries converted from Voyager to OCLC Discovery. In that timeframe, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library witnessed a rise in user dissatisfaction, in addition to an increase in time spent by librarians solving access issues.

Description: Since the transition from Voyager to OCLC Discovery, Kornhauser Library recognized that the OCLC product did not meet the needs of health sciences users. The lack of medical terminology and taxonomies provided a unique challenge for both users and librarians. As a result of the challenges presented by OCLC Discovery, the Head of Collections and the Emerging Technologies Librarian researched two health specific Discovery Services: OVID’s Discovery and EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) Health. The two products were presented to library faculty, and the decision was made to move forward with implementing a trial of EDS Health. In this presentation, the challenges of attracting buy-in, funding, and implementation will be discussed.

Conclusion: In order to evaluate EDS Health, the Head of Collections and Emerging Technologies Librarian formed a team consisting of representatives from all departments within Kornhauser Library. This team will evaluate searching efficiency, report any access issues, and trial the product with test users. The ultimate goal is to have this preliminary testing completed by the end of Spring 2019 and a full launch by orientation season.
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