On Sunday, August 9, 2020 we are looking forward to an upgrade from vendor Ex Libris to the central index that supplies articles and other content beyond Emory local collections to our discoverE “Combined Tab”. It’s called Central Discovery Index (CDI) and will have these improvements:
Lots more content
Ex Libris combined the indexes of two products, resulting in over 4 billion records for both open access and our subscription articles, e-books, audio, video and other e-content. This may better allow you to find what you’re searching for, and it may also result in a larger number of results for a particular search after the change.
To find what you want in very large search results, you may need to:
- use the “Show only” filters on the left to narrow to the type of resource you want (book, article, etc.) or by Creator, Subject, or some other factor.
- use quote marks around the title of an article or a single word.
We plan to publish more tips for searching the Combined Tab very soon.
Combining records for same content from different sources
You’ll no longer see a “view all versions” link next to some items in the results list. CDI determines based on identifiers when multiple records are for the same content and merges them, so there’s one result bringing together the links and description from different providers. This results in fewer clicks for users. It may also cause numbers of results for a particular search to shrink by taking out redundancy too. Emory’s locally managed records will continue to be separate from CDI records.
Ranking changes to improve getting what you’re likely to want nearer the top.
Many “under the hood” changes, including higher ranking when your search terms are in the title or a phrase you put in quote marks is contained in the results.
New and relabeled resource types
- new resource types for Computer File, Market Research, Microform, Newspaper, and Standard
- Archival material and Manuscripts combined as Archival Material/Manuscript
- Research dataset and Statistical dataset combined into Dataset
- Review relabeled Book Review; Technical Report relabeled Report
Note that not all resource types used by CDI are supported for our local Emory resources.
Known Problems
- Creator filter: You may notice that the “Refine my results” filter for “Creator” is missing or doesn’t include many authors. The new CDI index had a problem with authors/creators which is scheduled to be fixed in August.
- ORCID identifier search for creators. This is not working but is scheduled to be corrected in September.
- Collections filter: Some collections included in search results don’t appear in the Collections filter. This will be corrected over the next few months.
Please note:
- E-shelf bookmarks: there is a very small chance that if you have added a bookmark to your “E-shelf” in discoverE for a Combined tab article for other “central index” content, the URL will not redirect to the new article URL in CDI. If you are concerned about this, one thing you can do is to capture your E-shelf saved links, using the “Print” or “Email” functions.
- Permalinks: If you have included a link to the previous central index article’s discoverE record in a reading list or bibliography, there’s a very small risk that the “Permalink” may not redirect after the changeover. In that case, you may need to look up the article again and update the link
- Saved searches: If you are getting email alerts listing new items satisfying a search you saved, you may get an extra large list right after the transition to CDI. Later alerts should be more what you’re used to.
If you have comments or questions about CDI, you may use the discoverE Feedback Form: https://web.library.emory.edu/research-learning/research-tools/discoverE/discovere-feedback.html
If you notice problems in Combined tab after the August 9 update, email coreserviceshelp [at] emory [dot] edu.