About Discovery

Overview

Discovery is a new, simpler way to find books, journals, Web pages, multimedia, CSU scholarly works and other items at CSU Libraries and online.

Help us improve Discovery!

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Current features

Search multiple sources at once
Faceted search and browse
- Fields include topic, author, format, location, language, date
- Similar items ("more like this" suggestions)
- Authors (works, subjects, biography link)
Advanced search fields, options and syntax (phrases, wildcards, Boolean)
Alternatives when you cannot find or access items
- Search suggestions, including spelling ("Did you mean ...?")
- Other sources (repeat search or find an item in catalogs, booksellers, etc.)
Save information easily
- Bookmark and share searches and items
- RSS feeds of searches
- Citations (APA and MLA)
- Export to EndNote and other reference management software
- Search history

Possible future features

Add data from other sources
- Add Articles, e.g. using software like Xerxes or Serials Solutions Summon
- Add items from other local sources (CSU Web pages, Digital Collections)
- Integrate course reserves
Add personalization and social features
- Integrate with My Record saved searches, checked out and requested items
- Log in for locally saved searches, favorites, tags, ratings and comments
- Integrate tags, ratings, reviews and comments from external sources
- Translate the interface into other languages
Improve navigation
- Cleaner, simpler page layout (e.g. top navigation bar, facets, labels)
- Additional facets (new items, availibility, publisher, date, era, series)
- iTunes-like browsing

News

11-2009	Added subtopics to Topic facet. Added nearby call number link to catalog records. Added Dewey Decimal call number searches.
10-2009	Added CSU Theses/Dissertations format and ProQuest full text links. Added export to EndNote and other reference management software. Added citations for Digital Repository items and Web pages. Multiple search boxes are displayed on advanced search results. Improved search history and repeat search. Improved the word stemming algorithm.
08-2009	Discovery is the default search option on the new Libraries home. Added Digital Repository items and CSU Libraries Web pages. Added facets (source, digital repository collections, and subsites). Added availability in Prospector and Poudre libraries. Improved display of browsing and facets. Improved search result ranking algorithm. Improved layout and suggestions for searches with no results.
04-2009	Improved RSS feeds and search history. Improved author field values, accessibility and help.
03-2009	Added journal title search. Added Prospector links to search results and item views. Added search term highlighting. Added Previous, Next and Back links to records. Improved language, location and publication date field values. Improved sorting for browsing.
02-2009	Discovery was released to the public.
01-2009	Discovery was presented at CSU PDI 2009. PowerPoint presentation
12-2008	Internal usability studies of Discovery were conducted.
08-2008	An advisory team was formed to assist in design decisions.
08-2008	Libraries staff were trained by VuFind creator Andrew Nagy.
08-2008	VuFind was selected as the basis of the CSU Libraries discovery tool.
Early 2008	Open-source library catalog interfaces and technologies were tested.
Late 2007	Faceted search tools and library catalog interfaces were explored.
03-2007	The Research and Development Services department was created.

Project

Discovery is an online search tool which is being developed by the Research and Development Services department of CSU Libraries.

Discovery is based on VuFind, an open-source software project started at Villanova University to improve searching of library catalogs and other Web-based resources. See the presentation and brochure. VuFind is based on:

Apache Lucene: a search engine library for indexing content
Solr: a Lucene-based search server that includes facets
PHP: a scripting language for Web development
AJAX: techniques used to load data asynchronously (facets, availability)