Case Study: Grand Valley State University improves access to library collections with ProQuest's Summon

Grand Valley State University - Customer Case Study

Grand Valley State University, which serves about 24,000 students across two main campuses and a variety of satellites, had a library collection that was increasingly electronic but too compartmentalized for users. Library staff spent approximately $4 million per year on collections, yet students still relied on confusing A-Z database lists that made it hard to find resources beyond the most visible titles.

To address that problem, Grand Valley State University implemented ProQuest’s Summon web-scale discovery service, launched in August 2009 after six weeks of implementation. The university tested coverage against its top-used titles and found 99% coverage for the top 100 EBSCO Academic Search Premier titles, with all of the top 50 JSTOR titles and top 50 OCLC database titles indexed in Summon. ProQuest’s service gave users a single search box for physical and digital content, and the library said it improved access to the breadth of its collection.

Grand Valley State University

Ron Berry

Director of Technology and Information Resources