What to Know About the New EBSCO EDS UI

If you are on the fence about migrating to the new EBSCO EDS UI or in the process of configuring your new EDS, several institutions shared their experiences at the EBSCO User's Group Meeting earlier this month. Here are some key takeaways from Nicole Trujillo of the University of Colorado Boulder (went live Summer of 2022) and Richard Wisneski of Miami University (decided against migrating). These are snapshots of current functionality and that changes as EBSCO releases updates to the platforms (roughly quarterly). Updates are available through the EBSCO Platform Roadmap.

Configuration and Testing

• Currently the new EDS UI is controlled from two admin configuration portals:  EBSCOadmin and EBSCO Experience Manager. It's difficult to know which settings no longer apply in the new UI. Recommend periodically reviewing as changes are made each time EBSCO implements a new release.
• Highly recommend usability testing and feedback forms. Recommend creating your own institutional form as a supplemental link in the left-hand navigation pane since the blue link in the system goes directly to EBSCO. It's also handy to have a "Report a Broken Link" as one of the choices under "Access options."

Authentication

• Challenging to untangle EDS authentication from other EBSCO products with the new SSO.
• Authentication is controlled at the group level so it is not possible to turn Google/Social authentication on for databases (ehost profile) and off for the EDS.
• Profile order dictates which interface the persistent links go to. If EDS is ranked as the top profile, that's where the links will go (not ehost databases or Holdings Management).
• Users may need to log in twice. If they come through EZProxy it does not log them into SSO.
• Sessions expire in 24 hours so users can't leave a window open and expect to return to the page.

Search

• Search doesn't have the ability to deal with hazy searches (British spellings, truncated words, full article citations, author searches etc.).
• Limiters are not sticky if a user refines their key terms.
• No ability to limit to print books, ebooks or streaming video.
• No ability to rename and reorder limiters that appear on the right-hand side of the screen with search results.
• Not enough limiters in the advanced search.
• Does not do a good job of distinguishing between bibliographic and index records. LC Subject headings are more reliable than the different indexing rules applied across products in Discovery.
• Concept Map option is only for Keyword searching.
• Government and legal documents limiter only appears if the user first limits the Database to the Local Catalog. They also have to appear in either "Books" or "eBooks" in addition to their own legal or gov docs limiter.
• Seems that place names have to come first in a subject heading for an item to appear in the search results. Titles with the subject heading "Substance abuse-United States" are not appearing.
• The language limiter may return materials as being in "English" based on the abstract and not the actual article language.

Holdings Management (applies to current and new EDS)

• If package information is incorrect or missing (such as coverage dates) EBSCO recommends filling out a "Submit a Knowledge Base Content Inquiry" form (link on Holdings Management Overview page to correct the error instead of going through the more general EBSCO Connect support service.

Richard also pointed out his observations about user "Satis-searching" or "just good enough" searching behavior when configuring products like Discovery tools, meaning that the user will employ a search strategy that leads them to being satisfied with what they obtain and stop any additional investigation.