Discovery vs. Opac? With Alma/Primo, it is the Best of Both Worlds

Abstract

Discovery systems open an incredible world of search capabilities for library users. As sites move toward implementing a powerful system like Primo, they often encounter resistance from users wanting to continue using a traditional library OPAC. At the University of Tennessee, our philosophy is that discovery and traditional OPAC systems shouldn't have to be mutually exclusive. We are striving to answer that resistance by not only developing Primo as the best discovery system we can, but also incorporating certain elements of OPAC functionality and features within Primo. We are also learning that implementing Alma greatly facilitates this type of philosophical "blending" of the two system types. In this presentation we will discuss and demonstrate many of the improvements made to accomplish this goal such as browse search, enhanced thumbnails, adding LibGuides to Primo, re-vamped resource types, bX Recommender, View it/Get It links, PNX record expansion, MARC record display, etc. With this approach we hope to create the best of both worlds for our users by not only developing Primo as a discovery system, but also enhancing it with certain functionalities and features from a traditional OPAC system