Münster (upm), 03. Mai 2011
Everyone remembers the disco phenomenon of the 1970s. Now, however, the word takes on an extra meaning. In Latin disco means I get to know, and it can also be understood as the abbreviation of discover. And it is precisely these two activities – getting to know things, discovering things – that have become easier and more direct since May 2, due to the new search engine called “disco” now installed at the Münster University and State Library (ULB).
“disco” is an integrated search system and, with one click, users can search through the library’s stock of books and in over 85 percent of the articles available in electronic form at Münster University. “We’re one of the first libraries in German-speaking countries that can offer its users such a search facility that is simultaneously fast, comprehensive and easy,” explains Jörg Lorenz, deputy director of the ULB and head of digital services.
Anyone who uses “disco” cannot fail to compare it with Google as both systems have just one space for entering search terms. With “disco” the ULB’s idea was to accommodate users’ “Google” habits – after all, academics and students naturally google too when they’re looking for relevant information quickly. “And that’s something they’ll no doubt continue to do, even after the arrival of “disco”,” says Jörg Lorenz. Nevertheless, Lorenz, an engineer by training, is full of enthusiasm for the new product. “It’s especially for the users at Münster University that we can now offer this additional, tailor-made service with all the enormous advantages it has.” Indeed, something that “disco” provides for everyone engaged in academic work is access to sources that are simply not found when using general search engines such as Google.
Users are quickly directed by their search results straight to the electronic full texts or to the media ordering facility. “disco” also has other interesting features – for example, the possibility to filter search results, save them for a later date or even install a repeat search function. In this case, if there are any new hits the user is informed by internet or e-mail. Further services are being planned for iPhones and the like.
The secret of Google’s success is also the decisive advantage that “disco” offers: a sophisticated algorithm that automatically searches through a huge amount of widely varying sources and then organizes the search results in a user-friendly way. A conventional catalogue, such as the ones that most libraries offer on the internet for the purpose of searching through their stocks, simply cannot find various types of sources of information all at once – and certainly not in view of the quantity of data that have to be managed.
Around five million datasets were recorded in the previous ULB catalogue, but “disco” has access to more than 200 million. This is only possible by means of a modern search engine technology. However, “disco” is not just an offshoot of Google, nor is it something that can be had off the peg. This, says Jörg Lorenz, is important to understand. Over the past few months the ULB has done some important development work, and optimizing the search results will continue to be an important task for the library. The aim is to continually adapt “disco” as much as possible to users’ needs.
Despite the progress achieved with “disco”, traditional access to databases will still be available, as will the ULB catalogue. This is a response to one general difficulty that exists when using such high-performance search engines as “disco” – anything not found on the first few pages of the search results is normally considered to be not available. So anyone who wants to be absolutely sure that they haven’t overlooked anything can be certain by using the traditional search tools.
In the next few months the integrated search engine will run as a so-called beta-version. As is often the case when new software products are introduced, here too users are requested to contribute to improving details and optimizing the product. During this time the “disco” specialists at the ULB will be pleased to receive any suggestions, criticisms and reports of errors and they will try to solve any problems that could not be seen so far under laboratory conditions. If everything runs according to plan the new search engine will start normal operations at the beginning of the winter semester.