UKSG announces successful bidder for the Resource Discovery Study

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UKSG, with the support of Jisc, has partnered with LISU to carry out a research project on resource discovery. 'Assessing the Impact of Library Discovery Technology on Content Usage' will be carried out by LISU at Loughborough University, UK in collaboration with the Department of Information Science, Loughborough University and Evidence Base, Birmingham City University.

The project aims to evaluate the impact that library discovery technologies (such as link resolvers and web-scale resource discovery services) have on the usage of academic resources. It also aims to provide evidence to determine if there is a case for (a) investment in discovery technologies by libraries and (b) engagement with library discovery technologies by publishers and others in the academic information supply chain (unless no positive impact is found, in which case to provide evidence to this effect). In addition, it will provide recommendations for actions that libraries, publishers and others in the academic information supply chain should take to engage with such technologies to best support the discovery of resources for teaching, learning and research, and identify additional research, data, discussion, initiatives or other activities required that will support the implementation of the findings of this study.

Ed Pentz, research officer for UKSG and executive director of CrossRef said 'the use of library discovery technologies has grown enormously over the last couple of years. However, there still is very little publicly available information evidencing the impact of such technology. We are delighted to be working with LISU to help give publishers, libraries and other content providers the means to assess the impact of these technologies on usage of their content'.

Claire Creaser, director of LISU added 'we are excited to be working in this new and emerging area. We have a number of highly experienced researchers including Angela Conyers, Ann O’Brien and Valérie Spezi working on the project and look forward to presenting our results to UKSG and Jisc as well as the information community in the autumn'.

Preliminary results will be presented at the UKSG Global Forum on 15 November in London.