Don’t you love browsing around a library? I do. Maybe it’s one of the reasons you wound up working in a library. You may even stumble upon something you didn’t know the library had or a special room with a unique collection. The more inclusive a general library search is online, the more opportunities for this kind of happy accident. Around Innovative some of us call it “serendipitous discovery.” It’s a mouthful but you get the idea!
A case in point is how libraries are using the new Encore Harvester to bring in local special collections to the main Encore results-set. Take a look at this Encore search for Willa Cather at University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, and you will find books and electronic resources—plus Willa Cather photos, ephemera, and finding aids harvested from several local sources. Cather is a noted author with Nebraska connections. Here’s one of the Libraries’ images of her sitting in a Paris park…
From this simple keyword search, Encore also presents collection facets (on the left side of the screen) that limit to Cather materials from harvested collections—University Finding Aids, the Willa Cather Archive, and CONTENTdm.
The Cather materials are just part of the 200,000 items from seven Encore Harvester projects at UNL Libraries. For more on these collections see our recent press announcement.
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Surveys
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