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Abstract

Purpose: In May, 2008, the Ad Hoc Committee on Federated Search was formed to prepare a preliminary report on federated searching for a special meeting of Librarians Academic Council at Memorial University Libraries. The primary purpose was to discuss current implementation of federated searching at this institution, explore what other institutions have done, examine federated search technologies, and offer recommendations for the future of this resource.Design/methodology/approach: Information was drawn from a recent usability study, an informal survey was created, and a literature/technology review was conducted.Findings: These four recommendations were proposed and unanimously accepted: 1) actively develop our current federated search implementation by developing a web presence supporting 'federated search in context', 2) reevaluating the need for consortial purchase of a federated search tool, 3) continuing to assess the current federated search marketplace with an eye to choosing a nextgeneration federated search tool that includes effective de-duping, sorting, relevancy, clustering and faceting, and 4) that the selection, testing, and implementation of such a tool involve broad participation from the Memorial University Libraries system. Originality/value: Provided is an inside look at one institution's experience with implementing a federated search too particularly the area

Retrieval of Legal Information Through Discovery Layers: A Case Study Related to Indian Law Libraries

“…It can be divided into two major categories, i.e. cross search, which searches distributed sources simultaneously and presents the results in a common results interface; and harvested search, which retrieves the contents of multiple distributed databases, normalizes the records, and stores them in a large union index (Gibson, Goddard, & Gordon, 2009). Federated searching has some limitations, such as lack of relevancy-ranked results and inability to eliminate duplicate records, and so retrieves very limited information.…”

The benefits of resource discovery for publishers: a librarian's view

“…This approach offers huge advantages in speed and in the logic that can be applied to the presentation and sorting of results.' 6 Resource discovery should not be confused with knowledge bases and link resolvers. Resource discovery allows users to query preharvested content with a single search interface; this requires that the full text of publisher content is indexed within the discovery system.…”

“…Resource discovery allows users to query preharvested content with a single search interface; this requires that the full text of publisher content is indexed within the discovery system. Knowledge bases and link resolvers use standards such as KBART 7 to find appropriate content. One of the issues is that although, 'knowledge bases are increasingly positioned as an integral component of a broader set of inter-related products from each vendor', 8 they can also be treated as standalone systems.…”

Knowing me … knowing you: the role of technology in enabling collaboration

“…Since 2009, a number of web scale discovery systems have come to market; these systems move a step beyond the traditional federated-search products by creating a union index of harvested content direct from publishers and local library collections in order to make searching simple and fast (Gibson, Goddard and Gordon, 2009). Unlike federated search, web scale discovery means that users no longer have to wait for the slowest resource to retrieve a search before all results are displayed, or to have to negotiate separate online resource platforms in order to find information.…”