Who coined the term "discovery layer" or rather "discovery interface"?

Is that something vendors introduced after libraryland invented "Next generation Catalogs"?

phu

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terminology
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Comments

jonsca: Could you give more of a context for the term itself?
phu: "Discovery Layer" or "Discovery Interfaces" or a combination of them :) A well-known list is http://www.librarytechnology.org/discovery.pl
jonsca: Okay. The more specific information about it you can edit into the question, the more likely you are to get a good answer. As it stands, this question is a little vague. Thanks for the link.
Joe: An early 2008 mention, calling it out as a new term but an existing concept ... but the links in it are 404'd or walled off: http://federatedsearchblog.com/2008/03/05/discovery-layers-the-next-generation-of-federated-search/
Joe: A late 2007 mention, but worded in such a way as to suggest the author didn't coin the term: http://librarian.newjackalmanac.ca/2007_10_01_archive.html

Answer by ksclarke

Interesting question. I tried poking around a little on Google using date range limiting. So, queries that look like: "discovery layer" daterange:2452275-2452640 catalog (the date range is in Julian rather than Gregorian, but you can convert here: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.php

I'm assuming you're talking about for libraries, but it doesn't look like that was the first usage. I'm finding earlier links talking about "discovery layers" of Web services and, alternatively, device discovery. For instance, there are references to it in talk about UDDI (Universal Discovery, Description and Integration), an XML-based discovery mechanism. Symantec, on the hardware side, also talks about a Device Discovery Layer (DDL).

One of the earlier library-related references I found is on Lorcan Dempsey's blog (2005): http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/000865.html He references earlier work done within OCLC using the discover(y) concept: http://scanblog.blogspot.com/2005/02/discover-locate-request-deliver.html

That just shows the idea was percolating. So, figuring Dempsey's blog would be a good place to narrow the search, I searched for the full term "discovery layer"... the earliest reference is http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/000334.html where he uses it in quotes talking about the Arrow project (an Australian project developing institutional repository facilities for Australian Universities). The quotes makes me think he is quoting their use of it. This project was done in conjunction with VLTS (it seems).

There is more detail on Arrow here http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/000792.html

Interestingly, when I poke around the Arrow documents (http://www.arrow.edu.au/docs/), they talk more about a "Discovery Service" -- that's why I think the use of the term "Discovery Layer" in the earlier Web services literature is important/interesting. I can't help but wonder whether it's something that OCLC (Dempsey and others) pulled from the Web services world (and adapted for libraries). Later on, too, you see a lot of use by other Next Gen systems like Summons, etc.