LawLibTech

May 31, 2004

Federated Searching - A Reality Check

Federated searching sometimes sounds like the researcher's holy grail. But before getting TOO excited about the potential of federated searching, it's important to understand its limitations as well as its advantages. Webfeat, a provider of federated search technology, lists the five most common misconceptions about federated searching in this feature article from Information Today (Oct. 2003), "The Truth About Federated Searching."

May 08, 2004

Federated Searching and the OPAC

Information about our library collections is becoming increasingly fragmented. Most libraries have hard copy books and journals that are indexed in an online library catalog or OPAC. Web sources may be included in the OPAC, or in a separate database of web links. Other parts of the collection, such as MCLE video and audio tapes are often inventoried in another database or file. Then there are electronic subscriptions.

Even if electronic resources are included in the library catalog, this non-book information may not fit well into a MARC record. Trying to do so can be labor intensive, and not terribly satisfying.

As our collections grow in non-traditional ways, we have to ask ourselves if our resources are becoming increasingly hidden from the average user. We know about the invisible web and we certainly want to avoid the invisible library! That's why I get excited about the idea of cross-database searching ala Google and federated search engines. Because if people can't find the information we have, what's the point in having it?

If you're interested in these kinds of issues, you may want to read a recent Library Journal article, "Federated Search Engines Put it in it's Place" and the subsequent Web4Lib discussion on the relationship between the OPAC and other resources, and how to blend them all together into a real, virtual collection.

April 28, 2004

Federated Search Engines

What exactly IS a "federated search engine"? The March/April 2004 issue of Online includes an article, "Federated Search Engines" by Donna Fryer that defines federated search, distinguishes it from meta and enterprise searching, and explains how it all works.

According to Donna, "Federated searching aggregates multiple channels of information into a single searchable point. This blends e-journals, subscription databases, electronic print collections, other digital repositories, and the Internet."

The vendors in the federated search area such as MuseSearch and Webfeat offer their products as a way to search multiple, subscription resources at one time through an easy to use front-end. The user doesn't need to know which database offers a particular journal title or learn a search syntax for each service. The federated search product searches the services subscribed to by the researcher's library and returns a combined search results list.

While seen commonly in academic and public libraries, mainly for journal literature, federated searching is likely to become more popular in all kinds of libraries as a way to offer one search engine for a wide variety of premium research resources from many different vendors and web sites.

Have you noticed a reoccurring theme, whether it's Google, enterprise search engines or subscription resources? The ideal search engine returns results from a variety of sources without requiring the user to divine the appropriate source before searching.

Is there a federated search engine our your future? Let's hope so!