EDS FACT SHEET – basic functionality

(Not including specific problems)

• EDS has the catalog plus 85 databases currently enabled (20% public resources) in the main profile (Onesearch) after the most recent database review, which trimmed 46 databases.

• Major databases not directly included in EDS:

  • WestLaw

  • LexisNexis (some major U.S. news content available through ProQuest)

  • Most non-news ProQuest databases

  • ArtStor

  • SciFinder Scholar

• Limiters are divided into two categories in EDS: “Limiters” and “Facets”.  The “limiters” (See Appendix 1) persist in successive searches, and the “facets” (see appendix 2, the box below “limiters”) do not.  A couple of the “Limiters” are also represented in the “Facets,” namely “Location” and “Language.”

• Two limiters with nearly identical functions are the Full Text (FT) and ‘Available in Library Collection’ (AILC) limiters (note: the latter is not displayed in appendix 1). 

• The differences between the two limiters as defined by EBSCO are summarized in Appendix 4.

• In practice, they are virtually identical.  The AILC limiter contains just a few more records than the FT limiter (the difference, when it exists, is usually 1% or less).  The AILC limiter will retain ‘Electronic Resource’ items from the catalog more often, and these are sometimes streaming videos.  And in at least one test case (the title “Unnatural Causes” in the UmbcBMP profile), the AILC limiter retains a Media title that the FT title does not.  For these reasons, the preferred limiter in all cases should be the AILC limiter, whether it is displayed to the user or not.

The facet limiter “source types” (see appendix 3) has many format categories, most of which are self-explanatory.  However, “electronic resources” and “non-print resources” are somewhat opaque labels, and require explanation:

• Electronic Resources are defined by EBSCO as “Computer Files, Computers, Electronic Resources, eBooks, and Websites.” In practice, it is composed of ebooks, streaming video, periodicals, government documents, compact discs and laser discs.  Ebooks usually dominate results in this category, anywhere between 55-90% of the total. Items from Special Collections usually make up the bulk of the other miscellaneous results.

• One counterintuitive result that sometimes occurs in the “source type” limiters in the Onesearch profile (not the UmbcBMP profile) is that the ‘ebook’ category will often contain far more results than the ‘electronic resources’ category.  This usually happens when a search is on a general enough topic to turn up a lot of book results.  It’s because the ‘ebooks’ facet limiter in that profile includes results from two large EBSCO databases – ‘Discovery eBooks’ and the ‘Publisher-Provided Full-Text Searching File’ – which are not part of the UmbcBMP profile.  These two databases need to remain part of this profile because they are the only source of records for many ebooks and articles in that database.

• Non-Print Resources are defined by EBSCO as “CD-ROMs, Games, Kits, Mixed Materials, Multimedia, Objects, Realia, Visual Materials, and Technical Drawings”.  In practice, this is very close to the results you’ll find, with the addition of a small number of PhD and Masters’ theses from SPORTDiscus, and the occasional appearance of ordinary books from the catalog.  ‘Non-Print Resources’ typically comprise less than 1% of the result total from any given search.

Other limiter issues and behaviors:

• The “Articles” profile contains a small percentage of book and ebook results, coming from vendors such as Project Muse and others, and efforts to remove these from results have proven so far unsuccessful.  An experimental profile was created in early 2015 that did a better job of eliminating book results, but it had the fatal flaw of increasing results when limiting to ‘peer reviewed’ articles rather than decreasing them.  To date, no amount of tinkering with the profile or pleas to EBSCO have fixed this problem, so the experimental profile has not been implemented for general use.

• The way to combine multiple facet limiters, either within a facet category or from multiple facets, is to click on the “show more” link below each facet set that displays on the result page – Subject, Language, etc.  If a facet is chosen from the drop-down list below its facet heading, it will apply immediately and cannot be combined with other facet limiters.  Facets selected from the ‘show more’ screen, however, fail to persist after one search, just like single facets chosen from the display screen.

• Most numbers of results associated with facet limiters adjust to reflect the most recent limiters applied; for instance, a search on “New York” as an unspecified keyword produces a predictably enormous result set (39,758,599), with accordingly large result sets within each facet limiter, e.g. over 5 million ‘magazine’ results, over 2 million results from Wiley-Blackwell and so on.  But when limiters or further search terms are introduced, the result numbers associated with each limiter drop, as does the total number of results.  An exception to this pattern is the “Content Provider” facet limiter set, whose numbers remain the same regardless of the search performed.

• The way the “location” facet limiter works may be counterintuitive for some users; when combining locations in the “show more” options, the number of result returns actually diminishes as you add locations rather than increasing.  This is because the results shown are the items the libraries hold in common rather than what they hold cumulatively.  

Result behaviors:

• There is currently no way to limit catalog results by format or classification, or to tailor links and/or icons based on these or other criteria derived from MARC data.  Therefore it is possible to see, for example, a Reference volume or a Media item from a different campus with a ‘request’ button, even though the request will fail in Aleph.

• Discrepancies exist in most cases between EDS results from any given vendor/publisher and the results obtained by directly searching that vendor’s database interface, when available.  In the case of vendors/publishers, this is generally because the metadata they provide to EBSCO is not as complete as what they make available to themselves, in what is likely an effort to drive users to their own interfaces, to reinforce their brands and maximize opportunities for independent purchases. 

Appendix 1 – Limiters

Appendix 2 – Facets & Limiters on results page

Appendix 3 – Source Types

Appendix 4 – EBSCO Definitions of differences between Full Text and AILC limiters