Recently, business librarian Malisa Anderson-Strait 
attended and presented at the Internet Librarian conference, where many sessions focused on making maximizing search and discovery technology in libraries to make research more efficient and reflect our users’ preferred search techniques.
One of the key areas of discussion was making changes to library websites and databases that reflect much research starts at Google. For example, our original web design assumed our users would start at the Business Library homepage when searching for a database. However, Google Analytics data shows us that the common approach is to start with a search for part of the database name and the school name – e.g. a search “snp goizueta” when searching for the Standard and Poor’s database. This search strategy is being seen in many libraries – so both library web designers and database providers are seeking to make that search result successful. Here at GBL, we’ve added a lot of metadata to our website that includes quick searches like “snp” as well as “BOL” for Book of Lists, and many different common spellings of Thomson for when you’re looking for Thomson One. Hopefully, these changes make it easier for you to quickly find the subscription database you seek!
Our database providers are seeking to make their content more readily discoverable. For example, you may have noticed when searching Google Scholar that many peer reviewed articles from EBSCOhost’s Business Source Complete will appear in the results. One challenge many of our vendors face is that Google Scholar only includes peer-reviewed publications, and core business school journals such as Harvard Business Review don’t meet that peer-reviewed requirement. Lots of database providers at the conference shared ways they are seeking to make their interfaces play better with the free web and offer more ways to lead students to library database subscriptions so that your Google searches won’t end at a paywall.
Along with web design and research databases, sessions at Internet Librarian also looked at how other libraries are using data visualization tools such as Tableau. It’s not just for coursework — libraries are also using Tableau for visualizing library usage data. Your librarians are always seeking ways to implement these new tools as well as learn from best practices across libraries to enhance your learning and research experiences here at Goizueta.