Sabina Pagotto

As a sidequest from the research project I’m currently collaborating on (and where would this blog be were it not for sidequests from research projects?), I started to get interested in how people describe the library discovery layer/thing you search to students. I.e.: do people use the branded name or call it the library catalogue or something else entirely? (Spoiler: yes, several years in, they mostly actually do call it the branded name, but the variation is still interesting.) Below behold a selection of examples.

You can try searching…

[branded name] x 32
[branded name but slightly misspelled] x2
the [branded name] database x 2
[branded name] (the library search tool)
the [branded name] search
[branded name]/Library Catalogue
the library catalogue/[branded name]
the library catalogue x 7
the catalogue x 4
our catalogue x2
the catalog
the [institution] libraries’ catalogue
the [institution] catalogue
the library home page x 2
the library’s homepage
the home page
the library website
the library’s website
the library search system
the library database
the library system
the library’s discovery layer
the main search box
the [institution] database
the [institution]