Try Summon!
We invite you try Summon if you are frustrated by the current options for finding literature on a topic:
- Searching numerous resources one at a time, with different search interfaces and syntaxes, and trying to remove duplicates by hand, or
- Searching up to 12 resources at once with Metalib, but only being able to perform a simple search, having to wait for each resource to return its records to Metalib, and only getting up to 30 records from each resource initially, or
- Searching Google or Google Scholar which offers a quick and simple search but few tools to refine the huge number of hits you find, and having to follow each link to work out exactly what it is that Google has found, or
- Searching a single 'academic' resource and hoping that you don't miss too much.
We think that if you try Summon you might find that it offers the best of all worlds:
- A single search box, so no choices about which resources to search (all searches include the Library Catalogue too)
- Very fast results because it harvests data from our subscribed resources and builds them into a single database (like Google does)
- Clear display of results: it tells you when you have found a journal article, a book, a dissertation, etc.
- Powerful features to refine your results (so if you search for 'Europa' you can easily limit your results to just ones likely to be about the moon of Jupiter called Europa)
- The ability to save records and export to EndNote or RefWorks, as you'd expect
Summon is being developed by Serials Solutions and we are one of a handful of global beta development partners (others include Dartmouth College and the University of Sydney).
Summon is still only in beta release and we have identified some known issues, but please try Summon and use the feedback mechanism in Summon to tell us what you like about it - and what you don't - so that the developers can improve it to meet your needs.
Labels: discovery tools, federated search, Metalib, Summon
