Tarleton State University

Challenges

Prior to EDS, the Tarleton State University Libraries did not offer one central place for users to begin their research. Instead, students would have to go to different pages on the library web site to search the various resources available to them. The process was overwhelming to many.

“That’s a lot of silos,” said Tracy Holtman, Assistant Director for Collections Management. “We were hoping one search would help students find what they were looking for more easily.”

So the Libraries sought a discovery product that would provide users with a single search experience. In addition, Holtman said, library leaders wanted a product that would cater to less sophisticated researchers by allowing them to drill down results.

Solutions

Implementation

In 2011, Tarleton State University was among several institutions that implemented EDS along with the core members of the Abilene Library Consortium (ALC), a non-profit organization that equips libraries and museums with the technologies they need to provide information resources and services.
 
According to Edward Smith, executive director of the ALC, the organization had been looking to expand its services to libraries beyond the catalog. So EBSCO allowed the ALC to establish affiliate memberships for institutions like Tarleton that wished to continue using their existing catalog but wanted to take advantage of the consortial pricing for EDS.

For Tarleton State University, the choice was obvious.

“Seventy percent of our databases are from EBSCO,” Holtman said. “We’re familiar with how it searches [and] with its interface.”

Setup began in November 2011. Holtman worked with EBSCO to identify and load into EDS all of Tarleton’s catalog holdings, databases, and other electronic resources.

“We wanted to make sure EDS would cover all of our essential resources,” Holtman said. “The EDS folks were very, very helpful.”

Smith called the EDS implementation a “win-win-win situation” for all parties involved.

“It worked out great for everyone,” he said. “And EBSCO, in their technical brilliance, was able to accommodate every institution's unique subscription content and various catalogs.”

Customization, Branding & Authentication

Since the Tarleton Libraries colors are purple and light green, the Discovery Committee decided to brand the EDS logo accordingly. They named the service “Discovery@Tarleton.” While the “D” stands for “Discovery,” it also pays homage to Dick Smith, the professor and benefactor for whom the main library is named. Holtman said the committee also wanted the logo to look “superhero-esque” to match the Discovery tagline, “Power Up Your Search.”

“Discovery empowers students to find more,” Holtman said. “It’s a single search that casts a wider net. It gives them a good starting point.”

A “Discovery@Tarleton” search box appears on each Tarleton State University Libraries web page, and students have the option to limit their search by keyword, author, or title.

Meanwhile, the search results page defaults to the Advanced Search screen, which displays guided-style find fields. Holtman said she and her colleagues felt it was important to show all of the limiters available to students when they search. The search results page also features the Tarleton State University Libraries logo which users can click to be returned to the Libraries website.

Library resources have also been added to faculty course pages in the university’s course management system. Although Tarleton does not have LibGuides, the University Libraries website includes Subject Research Guides. Each of these pages includes a subject-specific search box that sifts through only those resources that are relevant to the subject. For example, the Agriculture Discovery@Tarleton search box searches Tarleton’s catalog records as well as databases related to agriculture, such as CAB Abstracts, Agricola, and Environment Complete.

Users can also access library resources from off campus. To authenticate remote users, Tarleton uses EZproxy. Patrons must log in before they can see any search results.

“A lot of our satellite campuses are at other universities,” Holtman explained. “For example, we co-teach at Navarro College. If we didn’t have users authenticate before they searched, they would only see Navarro’s resources, and not Tarleton’s. Their IPs, because of where they were coming from, were limiting them to Navarro resources. We wanted them to authenticate first so they could see all of our resources.”

Tarleton librarians tested EDS throughout the spring 2012 semester, becoming familiar with the platform’s features and making adjustments as needed. Although EDS officially launched over the summer, promotion did not begin until August 2012.

Training

EDS is taught as part of library instruction classes for students, so bibliographic instruction librarians worked together over the summer to develop the best approach for teaching EDS. Holtman said they wanted to ensure that EDS was being taught the same way across the board. Holtman estimates that about 85 percent of Tarleton students are shown the tool in a library instruction setting. The Discovery at Tarleton web page also provides links to tutorials and help sheets on the EBSCO Support Site.

“Having everyone understand the best way to use Discovery is my goal,” Holtman said.

Promotion

The Libraries promoted the new research platform in a variety of ways. Before the semester began, Holtman attended a number of departmental meetings and demonstrated Discovery to the academic deans, the provost, and the faculty.

They also sent out campus-wide emails featuring the Discovery at Tarleton logo, distributed informational bookmarks (pictured left), and hung about 1,200 door hangers on residence hall and faculty office doors across the Stephenville campus. A number of these door hangers were stamped on the back with the Tarleton Libraries logo. Any student that found one received a free Discovery t-shirt. The campus newspaper also printed a story about Discovery, encouraging students to be on the lookout for the winning door hangers.

Finally, the Dick Smith librarians had their picture taken as they enacted a game of tug-of-war while wearing t-shirts featuring the Discovery@Tarleton logo. The photo was posted as the cover photo on the Tarleton Libraries Facebook page.

“We really blanketed the campus with information about Discovery through all of our social media outlets,” Holtman said.

Benefits & Results

Since implementing EDS, library use is way up. Full-text downloads in 2012 increased 21 percent over 2011.

For six weeks, from March to May 2013, a “Take the Survey” link appeared in the upper-right-hand corner of the search results screen. The survey encouraged students to share feedback about Discovery at Tarleton.

Holtman said the most popular features among users were the ability to email search results and/or save them to personal folders. These features encourage better organization and facilitate collaboration.

“Discovery is very convenient when doing research,” said one user who completed the survey. “I was able to search multiple places at one time.”

The Tarleton Libraries also maintains a Twitter account. One student recently tweeted, “The @TarletonLib ‘Discovery Tool’ is my new BFF for researching #socialmedia in the #AgEdu classroom.”

Holtman said the response to Discovery has been positive.

“I think that the students like that it is one place to shop,” she said, adding that students are able to more easily find books, journals, digital videos, and music clips. “They would never go to all the individual databases; they would go to only one or two. Now they can search all of them at once, and that is just ideal.”

To learn more about EBSCO Discovery Service, or to request a free trial, click here.