Web-Scale Discovery Services: Principles, Applications, Discovery Tools and Development Hypotheses summarizes and presents the state-of-the-art in WSDS. The title promotes a middle-way between finding the best tool for each particular need and the search for the most reliable systems. The title identifies basic theoretical problems and offers practical solutions for librarians. The volume offers a summary of ideas from around the world, giving a new perspective that is backed up by strong theory. Offering a vision for libraries, this book also allows archivists, museum specialists, computer scientists, commercial operators and interested users to deepen their culture and information literacy.
The great number of information sources now available and the changing habits of web users has led to the development of Web Scale Discovery Services (WSDS). The goal of these systems and techniques is to make catalogues, databases, institutional repositories, Open Access archives and other databases searchable and discoverable through a single point of access. The diffusion of systems and connections between data disseminated by libraries and published by other institutions poses a challenge to understanding discovery in the modern library.

• Lays out the state-of-the-art in WSDS for contemporary libraries and institutions
• Presents an innovative take on information retrieval and digital document management
• Grounds thinking on a bibliographic basis, combining academic, practical and commercial aspects
• Offers a perspective on how WSDS and discovery tools are seen and used internationally
• Provides a version of culture and information literacy of relevance to a broad-range of cultural specialists