Resource discovery - Digital Information: Order or Anarchy? - page 144

search.
OpenURL : integration with an OpenURL resolver is an essential part of
any resource discovery platform.
Disadvantages
Cross-database search : users do not inherently know which databases to
search when faced with having to search each one individually.
Although meta-search systems allow users to search multiple
databases simultaneously, that does little in itself to resolve the
question of why a user would choose to search, say, Project Muse
and JSTOR simultaneously over WorldCat and Academic Search
Elite (Walker, 2007). Walker argues that in order to allow users to
customize their searches, librarians are in fact reverting to old
style lists.
Non-searchable content : no federated search can search all subscribed
databases for a number of reasons: permission is withheld by the
vendor, the resource is not compatible with federated search, or
there is a restriction on access, e.g. simultaneous users,
username/password access. In some cases, e.g. law, this can render
federated searching of little use; this may result in the federated
search being very difficult to market from the librarian's point of
view.
Dumbing down : the limited search capability means that controlled
vocabulary, indexes or thesauri, or in some cases even date-range
or peer-review filters, are lost to the federated searcher. This may
result in the possibility of inferior results; again, this often
discourages librarians from marketing federated searching to
certain users, e.g. researchers, faculty.
Lack of direct links to full-text content : although it is no more than a few
clicks away using the OpenURL resolver, the federated search still
returns no more full-text content than searching A&I databases
individually. This is one of the main reasons why librarians at the
University of Huddersfield do not recommend federated searching
for undergraduates who require full text immediately.
Speed : a federated search is only as fast as the slowest database to
retrieve results and therefore, when searching across a range of
databases, federated searches have a tendency to extreme slowness