Library Launches New Discovery Tool: ChengFind

ChengFind offers users an all-in-one search tool for library resources.

ChengFind is the new all-in-one search tool for library resources.

In September 2014 the Cheng Library, after a year-long period of research and evaluation, implemented ChengFind, a new search tool intended to greatly enhance the discovery of relevant information for library users. ChengFind provides a single-search box that returns results from the library’s catalog of book, e-book and media content as well as journal and newspaper content from our already licensed providers, selected online reference sources, and institutional online repositories. The intent of ChengFind is threefold: to improve the quality of search results for all users, but focusing on undergraduate and online students; to allow advanced researchers a way to enhance their research with results across a variety of disciplines they may not have searched otherwise; and to increase the overall discoverability and usage of our already-licensed online content.

ChengFind brings an improved search experience to William Paterson University users. Designed to provide a simple, yet powerful interface, users simply provide a few keywords in a Google-like search box. Result sets are often huge, as the underlying index is composed of nearly half a billion records, and being constantly added to. Despite this, though, users see a simple presentation of records and are clearly directed, via a left-side menu of facets, to refine the search. Limiters allow narrowing to scholarly and peer reviewed material, results only from the library catalog, or only results with full text online. Additionally, results can be further refined by restricting results to particular content types (e. g. newspaper articles, journal articles, maps, manuscripts, photographs, data sets or dozens of others). Still other refinements are possible: limiting by publication date, library location, discipline, subject terms or language allows incredibly precise fine adjustment of searches.

From the outset we have always intended ChengFind to supplement, never replace, our existing set of databases, such as Academic Search Complete, ABI Inform, Scopus, CINAHL, MLA Bibliography, PsycINFO and more than one hundred others. These subject-specific databases have search tools often unique to individual disciplines and allow detailed inquiry required for in-depth research. ChengFind will never replace these resources. What this new tool does, and does extremely well, is to open up initial research, allowing a user new to a subject to explore, learn about sources, and later focus and increase specificity.

ChengFind is featured prominently on the library’s web page, www.wpunj.edu/library. We encourage the entire WPUNJ community to give it a try and discover something new in the Library’s collections. Please send your comments and impressions to Kurt W. Wagner, Assistant Director, Library Information Systems, at wagnerk@wpunj.edu.

October 22, 2014