Implementing Summon: an unexpected journey

Authors

  • Ben Elwell

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.106

Abstract

In the past few years, the user interface to library content has developed from the classic OPAC, through federated search, and has culminated in the selection of discovery tools currently on the market.

At The University of Wolverhampton, we selected Summon as our discovery tool back in late 2010. We chose to implement Summon as our sole library catalogue interface instead of as a secondary service alongside an existing OPAC, a decision that was unique amongst Summon customers at the time.

This article looks at our experiences during the first two years of using Summon, from the initial implementation, through various stages of user feedback and developments that followed. We hope that sharing these experiences may help those looking to follow a similar path.

References

University of Wolverhampton Summon interface (shown in Figure 1): <a href="http://www.wlv.ac.uk/lib/search" target="_blank" >http://www.wlv.ac.uk/lib/search</a> (accessed 1 March 2013)\nGartner Hype cycle: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle" target="_blank" >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle</a> (accessed 1 March 2013)\nBorg M, 18 July 2012, Information Literacy & Summon blog: <a href="https://summonil2012.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/dave-pattern-huddersfield/" target="_blank" >https://summonil2012.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/dave-pattern-huddersfield/</a> (accessed 1 March 2013)\nSummon Stats GitHub repository: <a href="https://github.com/mreidsma/Summon-Stats" target="_blank" >https://github.com/mreidsma/Summon-Stats</a> (accessed 1 March 2013)\n

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Published

2013-07-08