Friday, January 22, 2010

Summon @ JCU or something else?

A lot has been going on behind the scenes with our Summon implementation. Serials Solutions report we are on track for a mid-February release.

Through the discussion list I've made contact with two other Horizon using 'Summoners', Dave Pattern at Hudddersfield and Emily Lynema from North Carolina State, whose brains I'm hoping to mercilessly pick in developing a regime of extracting deletions, additions and changes to Horizon records to update Summon.

As I've done all I can until SS get back to us with something to tweak the only outstanding task is naming the service. It's been briefly discussed at Library Management Committee.


So what are our options?
  1. Call it Summon (my quick hunt of launched Summon sites shows about 80% of institutions have done this) .
    Pro: people moving between institutions will know what it is.
    Con:
    To the uninitiated Summon doesn't mean anything (but neither did Google)
  2. Call it X Search (the name we currently have for our federated search tool)
    Pro: institutional continuity.
    Con: Meaningless to new members of our community
  3. Call it something else.
    Pro: we could choose something self-explanatory.
    Con: What?
I personally have reservations about naming things that have little or nothing to with the function or service the thing provided. I think every university catalogue should be called 'the catalogue', every intranet should be called 'the intranet'. But I fall down when I think of a meaningful name for 'federated searching' or 'discovery layer' or 'web scale discovery tool'.

As a working title I've gone with One Search because Serials Solutions need to stick something in place of 'name' and it's easily changed.

In the workroom we've had a couple of brainstorming sessions with an emphasis on silliness, the results included:
  • JCUgle (pronounced J Koogle)
  • Thing that you must search if you dont want to fail
  • Get a HD
  • Spare Brain
  • Better Than Google
  • Everything@JCU
As you can see I am desperate need of better suggestions! Marks will be deducted for:
  • Anything prefixed by a lower case letter (I'm over iThis, eThat, mTheother, xAnything)
  • Joined up words with mixed case (they are so NinetiesSpeak)
  • Trendy words and catchphrases (they don't stay fully sick for long, dude)
Bonus points for:
  • Brevity
  • Meaning
Please post your suggestions urgently!

9 comments:

Bronwen said...

How about Joogle - probably has copyright/trademark implications.

Sharon B said...

Not x-Search. For one thing, no one ever knew how to pronounce it. For another thing, I think it's good to start afresh.

Sharon B said...

The comic book geek in me wants to say "Oracle", but I have a strange feeling that's already been bagsed by something.

How about "Fetch"? "InfoFish"? "SearchLight"? "Matchmaker"? "Magic Button"? "Capture"? "Lure"?

We were talking about putting the lowercase "u" in front of words just to see if it would catch on:

"uSearch"...

(Did I lose points for that?)

Katrina said...

How about:
"Super Search"
"Single Search"
"Fast Search"
"Expert Search"
with a tag telling students to "Summon up the courage to leave Google".

Alan @JCU Library said...

They all go in the list - it will be interesting to see what the process LMC goes through to determine the answer.

Charles Cardinal said...

Odysseussearch!!!
Successearch!!
If-U-cant-find-it-with-this-it-doesnt-exist!!

Alan @JCU Library said...

I'm maintaining a list of all but the silliest suggestions on our Intranet

Kate E said...

I vote to keep it simple, maybe a little boring, but simple and obvious.
One Search -gets my vote

I like Alan's mock up.
One Search with the JCU logo and the word Library for our institutional brand

Alan @JCU Library said...

I think when we were batting around One Search around I came up with the tag line 'One Search to rule them all'.

Then on the weekend I started playing with ideas on this theme:

'One Search could be the difference between a credit and a distinction'

Then I realised how much eaiser it is play with words than with Library ICT services and contemplated a career change ;-)