Book Review: Exploring Discovery: The Front Door to Your Library’s Licensed and Digitized Content

Abstract

We are well into the twenty-first century and many libraries, large and small, are dealing with the ever-evolving subject of discovery. This book does an excellent job of covering the many discovery interfaces and platforms available and their impact at various libraries. Discovery is, to quote a statement given in chapter 10 of this book, “enabling people to pick out what they need from an otherwise unmanageable mass of information” (120). Given the changing roles of libraries, as well as the multitude of different media types with which libraries must now deal and must make accessible to patrons, discovery is more important than ever before. Thus, this growing need for discovery that is user-friendly, all encompassing (or nearly so) and fairly intuitive on the back end has given birth to a plethora of options, all of which have their benefits and drawbacks. As not every library or collection is identical, so can be said for the various discovery platforms explored in this work.