Summon: Search and Display of LibGuides
- Product: Summon
How are LibGuides searched in the Summon service and how do they display?
If you have LibGuides (a Subject Guide tool from Springshare, Inc.) in your library, the Summon service can index and search your LibGuides, which allows your patrons to discover related subject-guide materials more easily.
How it Works
The Summon service does this by indexing the web-page content from the LibGuides pages directly. Summon indexes this content approximately once a week, to allow new guides and updated guides to sync up with the Summon service.
Summon indexes the title, publication date, author, publisher, copyright info, description, full-text, and language from the LibGuides pages. The navigational links from the tab-based menu in the LibGuides pages are also indexed, along with the author's photo, and displayed in the search results. Patrons will be taken directly to the subject-guide content via links provided by Springshare.
LibGuides content and all local-library-developed content is boosted in the CDI relevancy index. Boosting search-relevancy ranking brings smaller, yet highly relevant material to the forefront of the Summon search results.
If your library has subject guides on your library's website that are not powered by LibGuides, or your LibGuides have not been loaded into the Summon service, please submit a case using the Support Portal (available from the More Sites menu above) with the following options selected:
Asset: CDI --> Case Type: Content --> Subject: LibGuides --> Indicate one of the following:
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Activate LibGuides for Summon (if Summon has never previously indexed your LibGuides)
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Update LibGuides to v2
In addition, you can create custom Summon search boxes to include in your LibGuides pages.
Metadata Suggestions for Topics Matching
There are key metadata elements used in the algorithm that matches LibGuides to Summon Topics. Ensuring that these LibGuide metadata elements exist and are well-formatted can help improve the matching frequency.
Title
Title matching is important in mapping a Summon Topic to a LibGuide. Make sure the title is clear and descriptive and matches the topic of the content covered in the guide.
Description
The description is also used in mapping a Summon Topic to a LibGuide. The description should be a clear summary of the topic, not the guide. Use more than a few words, try to make the description a few sentences if possible.
Subjects
Subjects are also used in mapping Summon topics to LibGuides. If the LibGuides system allows you to add whatever terms you like, add the desired terms to match topics. If it only allows predetermined values, add the closest relevant term.
If you have addressed the above elements and you are not seeing good matches of Summon Topics to your LibGuides, we ask that you provide examples of queries where you expect to see a LibGuide in the Topic Explorer pane. This will help us as we fine-tune the algorithm.
- Date Created: 9-Feb-2014
- Last Edited Date: 30-Dec-2020
- Old Article Number: 8737