Chapter 7: Questions to Consider

Abstract

For numerous reasons, libraries contemplating the purchase of a web scale discovery service should very carefully complete their homework. The following set of questions can serve as a primer for those engaging in their own evaluations of the increasingly competitive library web scale discovery space. Questions are divided into several topical areas: general and background questions; local library resources; publisher and aggregator indexed content; open access content; relevancy ranking; authentication and rights management; and the user interface.