Facilitating Content Discovery and the Value of the Publisher Platform—An Overview

Libraries invest heavily in content, both through purchase and licensing. This money is wasted, however, if faculty and students are unable to easily locate and use content for research and teaching. Designing and promoting tools to assist in navigating a variety of information sources have been the purview of both librarians and information providers—from the card catalog to sophisticated indexing and abstracting databases to discovery products such as Summon and Primo. Where, however, do publishers fall into the information discovery mix? Should they be investing resources and time into the development of their product platforms, or should they cede content discovery to third parties? Publishers have a vested interest in making their content discoverable through as many paths as possible, and once discovered, publishers want to offer the user additional related content to prolong their stay on the publisher’s own site. Librarians also want to provide as many options to our users as possible, rather than investing in a single discovery option.