[Eril-l] Strategies for improving discoverability of ProQuest materials in EDS

Fri Nov 14 12:17:27 PST 2025

For those who have been in libraries for a very long time, you may remember “federated searching”, the pre-Discovery Layer tool that would take a user’s search and send it to every subscribed database, then gather, compile, deduplicate, and display the results. It was very slow and very clunky, but was also trying to manage dozens or more searches and their results all at the same time.

The discovery layer is clearly a superior product for implementing these searches, but it requires contracts and licensing that federated searching did not. This is why you won’t find ProQuest content in EDS, or EBSCO content in Primo or Summon. (From here on out, assume that “Summon” means either Primo or Summon.) You may find citations for newspaper articles in EDS, but EDS is not searching the full text of those ProQuest articles – only the citations provided by an A&I database.

While trying to find some solution to the fact that we cannot search ProQuest newspaper content in EDS last year, I realized that federated searching could be an excellent tool here. Imagine your library primarily uses EDS, but also has a discounted version of Summon that only includes the content not available in EDS, or vice versa for a primarily Summon library, with a discounted EDS instance.  The library’s federated search tool would only have to search two sources – EDS and Summon. You could also then add other content that’s not in either database, as well. But even then, you wouldn’t be looking at more than maybe up to ten sources altogether – not the dozens and dozens that Central Search, WebFeat, and others, tried to manage.

When some ProQuest folks made a site visit last year, I pitched this idea to them: resurrect Central Search, and offer a tool that really actually could search almost all subscribed e-content. They said they’d only just done away with Central Search in the last few years, and there was no interest whatsoever in bringing it back.  So there’s no chance there.

But if someone can create a product that does bring back the federated search concept, but only for a few interfaces, it could be a pretty useful tool. The product needs have a profile for each interface (I can’t remember what we called these in Central Search, but building each one was a bit of a challenge), though nowadays you’d just search an API whenever possible. You’d also need the ability to deduplicate all of the results that came back. You’d need to create the interface to manage all of those results – because now you’re not looking at EDS or Summon, you’re looking at something that combines both, plus a few other resources not available in either one.

It’s a pipe dream, I know, but that seems to me like the best path to getting *all* e-content in one searchable interface.

Peter McCracken
Interim Director, Acquisitions & E-Resources Licensing Services
Cornell University Library
phm64 at cornell.edu<mailto:phm64 at cornell.edu>

(and long ago, co-founder of Serials Solutions, the company behind Central Search and Summon)

From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> On Behalf Of Electronic Resources in Libraries discussion list via Eril-l
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2025 11:38 AM
To: Electronic Resources in Libraries discussion list <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] Strategies for improving discoverability of ProQuest materials in EDS

Piggybacking on that.  Does anyone know how to include ProQuest Newspapers or indexing for Newspapers in EDS?  We have MajorDailies from ProQuest but the NYTimes. WSJ and WashPost are not indexed there.

Best,
Hal Bright

Hal Bright, MLS, AHIP
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On Fri, Nov 14, 2025 at 8:55 AM Electronic Resources in Libraries discussion list via Eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>> wrote:
Hello everyone,

Our library users mostly access content through EBSCO Discovery Service. We’re noticing that our ProQuest Central and eBook Central materials have comparatively low usage. For libraries that use EDS and subscribe to ProQuest products, what are your best strategies for enhancing discoverability?

Thanks!

Regina

Regina Seguin
Electronic Resources Management Librarian
rseguin at excelsior.edu<mailto:rseguin at excelsior.edu>
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