Case Study: Grand Valley State University boosts library resource usage with ProQuest Summon

Grand Valley State University says Summon™ web-scale discovery is sending students directly to full text and book shelves

Grand Valley State University (GVSU) was looking for a way to give students simpler access to its library collections without using federated search. In July 2009, the university became the first non-beta library to implement ProQuest’s Summon web-scale discovery service, after evaluating whether it could thoroughly represent the library’s collection.

ProQuest’s Summon service was fast-tracked into production and integrated into the university’s systems, including Blackboard. GVSU reported 99% coverage of its top 100 downloaded titles from Academic Search Premier and 100% coverage of its top 50 JSTOR titles and top 50 OCLC titles. After implementation, usage rose sharply, including a 92% increase in Academic Search Premier, a 179% increase in General OneFile, and a 354% increase in ABI/INFORM in the first four months; the top 100 journals saw average usage increase 48%, and the top 1000 journals increased 82%.

Grand Valley State University

Doug Way

Head of Collection Development