New Central Index Coming to QuickSearch
In Spring 2020, Ex Libris will release its new Central Discovery Index (CDI), an expanded search index with an upgraded infrastructure that will replace the current Primo Central Index (PCI). The central index is a collection of records describing hundreds of millions of scholarly resources, including articles, books, conference papers, and audiovisual recordings harvested from publishers, aggregators, and open-access repositories. The new index will offer several improvements, including:
- Expanded content coverage
- Faster content updates
- Merged records instead of record groups
- New and more granular resource types
- Streamlined activation process
Although the transition to CDI is expected to be seamless, users may notice the following changes:
- More search results
- CDI leverages the combined assets of Primo and Summon, which means users will have access to more content than before
- Changes to retrieval and ranking
- CDI uses a different search algorithm impacting the way results are retrieved and ranked
- Merged records
- Duplicate results within the central index are merged into a single record instead of grouped together
- New and more granular resource types
- CDI will offer new resource types (e.g., archival material, market research, dataset, standard) and more granular categorization (audiovisual will be separated into audio and video)
- Broken permalinks
- The majority of permalinks will continue to work but Ex Libris estimates that ~10% could not be mapped and will break
To minimize disruption, the new index will be activated after the spring semester ends on May 18th, 2020. If you have any questions, please contact exlibris@rutgers.libanswers.com.
Law Libraries – By the Numbers
The Law Libraries Append Project added a large number of physical and electronic resources to Alma and QuickSearch in January 2020. For physical, 188,572 titles and 463,395 items were added. For electronic, 95,216 titles representing 117,237 electronic resources were added. Also, 3,042 user records were loaded containing 1,451 new user records and 1,591 updated records and 3,583 checkout records attached to these users were loaded.
Leganto in Action – Spring 2020
Sixty-two unique course sections are actively using Leganto for Spring 2020. This includes at least one course from every campus and courses that span eight Rutgers schools and colleges. The School of Social Work in New Brunswick’s online and hybrid courses have continued to make active use of the Reading List tool, but there are also notable numbers from the College of Arts and Sciences in Camden and the School of Nursing at RBHS.
Introducing Esploro
Rutgers University Libraries have contracted with Ex Libris to integrate Esploro, an institutional repository platform for collecting, managing, and showcasing the university’s research output. Esploro offers a variety of useful features including:
- Support for over 50 asset types including pre-prints, publications, data sets, audiovisual media, and creative works
- Direct and mediated deposit as well as automatic capture of assets from external sources such as indexes, national repositories, and disciplinary repositories
- Researcher profiles allowing for easier identification of domain experts and potential research collaborators
- Integration with Pivot, a global funding database that helps match researchers with potential funding opportunities
- Robust analytics for measuring research performance and impact
Integration of Esploro into our Alma environment begins March 2020 and will be carried out in two phases. The first phase will focus on data migration and system configuration and is expected to be completed by the end of summer. The second phase will focus on education, promotion, and campus engagement. Stay tuned for further updates as the project unfolds.
