Summon Service Adds New Content Providers and Beta Partner

Serials Solutions (www.serialssolutions.com), a business unit of ProQuest, has added several new content providers and a new library beta development partner for its Summon unified discovery service. The service is being developed in close cooperation with library beta partners, with a goal of not only bringing the researcher back to the library but providing a channel for greater return on the library's content investment. The new partner, Western Michigan University, which will use the Summon service with its VuFind next-generation catalog, joins Dartmouth College, Oklahoma State University, University of Sydney, and University of Liverpool in providing feedback that will refine all aspects of the service.

New content providers include IEEE, the pre-eminent engineering society, information technology publisher IGI Global, international scholarly publishing leader Brill, and a pair of Australian presses that expand the service's local coverage. The Summon service's contributors, which include the content resources of ProQuest and Gale, have expanded to more than 80. Harvested content now exceeds 400 million records in preparation for the service's July launch.

Summon bypasses federated search in favor of a single search against preharvested content enabling fast results, in true relevancy-ranked order. Publishers have embraced the service for this ability to surface content in the right context at the right time for the right user. The Summon unified discovery service creates a library-branded search box that eliminates the confusion users have in finding a starting point for library research, making collections simple to use. The hosted service is built with an open API that will allow it to integrate with existing library websites or campus systems with low impact on staff. To learn more about the Summon unified discovery service, visit www.serialssolutions.com/summon.