“Pretty Rad”: Explorations in User
Satisfaction with a Discovery Layer at
Ryerson University
Courtney Lundrigan, Kevin Manuel, and May Yan
Courtney Lundrigan is Instructional and Reader Services Librarian in John W. Graham Library at Trinity
College, University of Toronto; e-mail: courtney.lundrigan@utoronto.ca. Kevin Manuel is Data Librarian
and May Yan is E-Resources Access and Discovery Librarian in Ryerson University Library; e-mail: kevin.
manuel@ryerson.ca, may.yan@ryerson.ca. © 2015 Courtney Lundrigan, Kevin Manuel, and May Yan,
Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC.
Web-scale discovery systems are becoming prevalent in research libraries.
Although a number of studies have explored various impacts of discovery
systems, few studies exist on user satisfaction. The investigators of this study
evaluated user satisfaction with the discovery service Summon at Ryerson
University, using online questionnaires and in-person focus groups. Results
indicated a high level of satisfaction overall, although this was heavily influenced
by the quality of search results over ease of use. The study provides
insight into the information-seeking behavior and search preferences of a
user when a discovery layer is implemented in a research library.