Designing an Evaluation Process for Resource Discovery Tools

This chapter discusses a process that can be used by libraries to evaluate the current generation of resource discovery tools. The process considers a three-tiered approach to the application, considering technical, functional, and usability layers. Because the current generation of discovery tools is very flexible, the process discussed uses an initial pass of evaluation to gain insight into the abilities of the tool and how users approach it. This leads to a further evaluative iteration, mainly at the usability level, where the user observations from the first iteration are used to inform more refined use cases.