Library Web Chic

I’d heard that EBSCO was acquiring SPORTDiscus(tm) earlier this spring when the EBSCO representative visited and we were discussing changing some of our subcription. I’m really excited about the possibility that a fulltext version of this database be created and the interface further enhanced. This is probably one of the most difficult databases for our students to use. I think it is because it currently doesn’t contain any fulltext and it contains so may different types of information: books, book chapters, reports, articles, etc. It makes it difficult for the students to find a copy because they struggle figuring out if we have a copy and where that copy might be. In my opinion this database could benefit from something like CSA’s Illumina interface which has tabs that divide the results by format (book, website, report, article, peer-reviewed article). The limits on the search screen aren’t bad but students don’t realized until after they’ve done the search that perhaps they need to limit and they don’t really want to go back and redo the search. I hope that EBSCO will improve on the database over time because it certainly has key information for a segment of our students here.