Discovery is the researcher’s dream
Discovery is a perennial theme and our guest editors have curated the articles Insights has published on this subject over ten years. This collection charts the irrevocably altered state of information discovery and shows traditional library catalogues competing with, adjusting to and leveraging search engine technology.
The need for good quality bibliographic metadata is restated repeatedly, not least by Bascones and Staniforth (2018) who asked, ‘What is all this fuss about? Is wrong metadata really bad for libraries and their end-users?’ Many of our authors highlighted the importance of library technology in improving access to e-resources for users, but this is not without debate. Some suggest we should resist the lure of shiny new technology, and others think the unthinkable – that we should be doing away with the library catalogue. Reimer (2018) looks to the future, asking, ‘How long will it be until the likes of Siri and Alexa will be able to respond meaningfully to user requests such as “Find scholarly articles that correlate social unrest in 17th-century Europe with the Little Ice Age, and make related climate data available on my desktop”.’
We think libraries will continue to innovate, change and offer value, and we look forward to bringing you the next chapter.
Guest Editors
Magaly Bascones
Rebekah Cummings
