I agree with François and Ariane: for us, the value of this functionality just lies in the ability to discover databases (and journals) by subject category. We were very disappointed to hear that there will be no possibility to organize the databases by category in the planned A-Z list. We waited for this feature, but now it looks like we will have to make our own development.

@Ariane: I agree. Some comments at http://ideas.exlibrisgroup.com/forums/308176-primo/suggestions/17752762-journals-a-z-subject-indexing-or-discipline-index also concern the need for a Subject-indexing or Discipline-indexing at the database level.

Hi there,

In case 415141, I've been told that unlike in the current Find Databases feature, it will not be possible to organize databases according to categories. In the Find Databases feature there are categories and sub-categories (e.g. Economy, History of Art, Maths, Astronomy...) which are very instersting for our user as they allow them to search by discipline. Currently they're are manually set-up in Metalib.

In the other, I read in Stacey's presentation that "Library can configure keywords associated with databases". I hope that it will replace the categories system and allow our patrons to search by subject anyway.

Hi Matthew - I believe the latest Roadmap covers this, with an A to Z coming in the 2nd half of 2017. See pages 12 and 13 for Database changes: https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/@api/deki/files/40104/Primo_Roadmap_Highlights_-_2016.pdf

We are working to adopt the new Primo UI.
Currently we use MetaLib to present students with an A-Z databases list and we understand that this is not supported in the new Primo UI.
We note this idea says it is "planned" but there has been not update for 6 months. Can you give us some idea how soon this might be developed? We need to decide if we should put effort into developing an alternative solution. Many thanks

LibGuides A-Z Database List functionality is the best solution on the market right now in terms of simplicity, user-friendliness, and customizability. Primo should be able to compete.

@Stepehn Francoeur In our AZ Database you can manually put in alternate titles in the MARC records in Alma for the database

Have the main title as JSTOR, then put in all the common misspellings JSTORE etc. as alt titles - this makes them searchable

Cheers

Justin

I'd to add on to this with a related suggestion. It's not just that Primo should offer a nice A-Z list but it should also handle actual search queries for databases much better. Over the past four years that we've had a discovery service (Summon, then Primo), we've seen in the search query logs lots of attempts to find a database by entering the name of it in the search box (regardless of how we label or present that search box on the library home page). It would be great if a user who types in, for exampe, JSTOR (or JSTORE, or J STORE or J STOR) was presented with well-designed, impossible to miss or ignore box at the top of the search results (or maybe an interstitial page that appears before the search results page) that says something like, "JSTOR database? Is that what you were looking for? Yes No" Yes would be a link to the database, No would take you to the search results.

Great development! And fully agree with Justin. It must have category filtering as well.

Thank you.

Very much appreciated development! We are struggling with this subject as part of our Alma implementtaion. Any thoughts on a timeframe?

Thanks Yuval - great suggestion

1 important feature that we need in Find a database is Category and sub-category filtering

Note: here's Swinburnes version of Find a database that uses Alma - but not Primo
- with category and sub-category filtering on the left hand menu

Demo: http://www.swinburne.edu.au/library/search/databases/#
Code: https://github.com/justinkelly/az_databases

Thanks

Justin Kelly
Swinburne