How Do Librarians Prefer to Access Collections?

The University of Kansas (KU) Libraries first made the discovery tool, Primo (Ex Libris), available to their users in the fall of 2013. Since that time, in spite of many improvements and updates, librarians still prefer to use other resources. In an effort to facilitate open and honest discussion about the Primo discovery tool and to make recommendations to improve the functionality of the instrument, librarians at KU were asked to complete a survey that helped them compare Primo to their favorite database and to Google Scholar. The survey included a known item search, a prescribed topic search, and the opportunity for them to search for a topic in their subject expertise specialty. The librarians were asked the following questions about each resource they used:  Looking at the first ten results, how many of them are relevant?  Did you change your search strategy or use the facets in Primo or other methods of narrowing in on a topic to find more relevant results?  What was your reaction to the results in each resource?  Was it obvious the results included books, articles, or other resources?  Were the results easily accessible? In this session, KU librarians will share their survey instrument. They will discuss, in detail, the results of the survey and the comments made by librarians while completing the survey. They will also share the recommendations for improvements they made to IT staff who administer Primo. Audience members will be asked to share their experiences with discovery tools at their libraries.