Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
being made:
We've also recently held discussions with CrossRef about how they can
complement KBART's work by providing related services to their
members. CrossRef will likely proceed with developing a service that
offers to collate its members' KBART-related data for onward
distribution to, or collection by, link resolver managers.
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The success of this working group is essential if resource discovery is to
overcome the present barriers.
Federated (meta) searching
The jury is still out on federated search systems, even though more
libraries now have them. There are murmurings that federated search
has lower-than-expected use and may not be the magic search bullet we
were led to believe.
(Tenopir, 2007)
Federated searching (or meta searching) is now a mature product,
having been with us now for over ten years,
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during which time a
number of products have come and gone from the marketplace.
However, is it the Holy Grail
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that we were once led to believe it was?
Many librarians do not recommend federated search, despite actual
usage increasing (King, 2008). Anecdotal evidence from users'
comments at the University of Huddersfield concurs. Problems with
federated search rank alongside lack of library textbooks as the peren-
nial favourite in the students' comments. So what are the arguments for
and against?
Benefits
Simultaneous search
: possibly the very reason many libraries purchased
federated searches in the first place - an opportunity to take the
fight to Google.
Personalization features
: the ability to personalize database and e-journal
lists and to save searches are seen as benefits for the federated
