Today's electronic information landscape is growing exponentially with no signs of slowing. This poses a significant challenge for academic libraries. Librarians must continually learn and adapt to harness this explosion of resources. To fulfill their claim as the leaders in the information field they must be effective in providing access and delivering bibliographic instruction to their patrons. Libraries are quickly learning that traditional OPACs are not quite getting the job done in this modern information environment and are turning to discovery layer services to enhance their catalogs (Safley, Montgomery, & Gardner, 2011). Utilizing a web scale discovery layer service is one way public services can attempt to efficiently connect users to the electronic content that is consuming our dwindling materials budgets. Discovery layer services vendors make many promises, but it is not clear if these claims are actually being realized by subscribing libraries. An analysis of current discovery layer services and the issues around these products is necessary to truly weigh any benefits. The analysis presented in this article specifically addresses issues the discovery layer services cause for public services and makes recommendations for softening the impact of these flaws.