Why Web-scale Discovery Means the End of Build vs. Buy Cody Hanson, Acting Director, Web Development, University of Minnesota University Libraries The challenges of licensing, aggregating, and indexing necessary metadata put the possibility of building a web-scale discovery system outside the reach of most if not all libraries. Successful implementation of a third-party web-scale discovery system requires nuanced local configuration and attention to user experience that goes far beyond an out-of-the-box implementation. In short, web-scale discovery requires libraries to both buy and build. Cody Hanson is the acting Director of Web Development at the University of Minnesota Libraries, where he works on, among other things, Drupal and discovery. He co-chaired the University Libraries’ Discoverability task forces. He speaks, writes, and teaches on topics like libraries, user experience, and mobile.