Library Discovery Service : Primo

Maximize the exposure of your library collections, and provide students and researchers with fast access to scholarly materials and intuitive ways to explore new content. Primo library discovery service seamlessly integrates with a wide range of library and academic systems for end-to-end, efficient workflows. Our active user community amplifies the power of Primo through sharing customer-led innovations, best practices and collaborative developments.

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Delivering the experience that users expect

Give patrons access to a wealth of scholarly materials and the most relevant mix of resources related to their research. All via a single search interface, anytime, and on any device.

Maximizing the value of library collections

Increase the use of library resources, promote the visibility of your library services, and demonstrate value to decision-makers through advanced analytics.

Supporting the art of librarianship

Increase productivity with end-to-end library workflows, and advanced harvesting and normalization capabilities. Easily customize Primo discovery service to influence how collections are explored and displayed.

Embedding discovery in the academic ecosystem

Connect discovery with research systems, teaching and learning platforms, student mobile apps, and other tools, with Primo’s out-of-the-box product integrations and open APIs.

Evaluating the Impact of Primo Library Discovery Service

An effective web-scale discovery service can improve the use of your library collections and strengthen your library’s role in the research process. In fact, studies confirm this: libraries that have evaluated their discovery tools have found them to have a positive impact on the institution.

Here are some illuminating examples of recent studies examining the effectiveness of web-scale discovery in research libraries:

At the University of Manchester in England, in-person and online surveys of more than 1,000 library users from 2013 to 2016 indicated that library patrons relied on the library’s discovery tool to find relevant content more often than Google, Google Scholar, or even course reading lists. During this four-year period, patrons were using the library’s discovery service nearly 10% more than they were four years earlier. Meanwhile, use of Google and Google Scholar decreased and remained flat, respectively.
In a Jisc-commissioned survey of 80 research institutions across the United Kingdom in 2016, respondents were asked how their users find information. Discovery services fared as well as Google Scholar and far outpaced strategies such as abstract databases and Wikipedia across a range of activities, such as locating and accessing known items, carrying out an initial subject search, and pursuing a line of inquiry. 73 out of the 80 libraries surveyed said discovery solutions are useful in finding a specific journal article, and 69 said they’re useful in finding information without a known title in mind.
A 2016 survey from Ithaka S&R found that three-quarters of college and university libraries in the United States consider “using an index-based discovery service to facilitate access to information resources” as a highly important priority. In a similar survey conducted in 2013, nearly 80% of respondents said they are able to help users find new items they don’t know about much more effectively with their discovery tool—and more than half said their discovery solution has made the speed and efficiency of library searches much better.

As these and other studies demonstrate, both quantitative and qualitative analysis reveals that discovery solutions are having a big impact at institutions worldwide. These findings are supported by an analysis of anonymous usage data across all libraries using the Ex Libris Primo discovery service. Aggregated usage statistics from Primo indicate a more than 100% increase in the total number of pages viewed and total user sessions per institution from January 2014 to March 2017.

To learn how you can successfully evaluate your own discovery service, download this free white paper.