University of North Texas Federated Search Mark E. Phillips August 24, 2006

University of North Texas Library CatalogDigital CollectionsLibrary Website Electronic Resources Library Data Stores

University of North Texas

Library CatalogDigital CollectionsLibrary Website Electronic Resources Search 1 Search 2 Search 3 Search 4

University of North Texas Library CatalogDigital CollectionsLibrary Website Electronic Resources Super Cool and User Friendly Federated Search Tool Z39.50, SRU/SRW, XML, OpenSearch, http

University of North Texas Federated vs. Faceted Search Federated Search: A search is executed across multiple databases/datasets with the results presented to the user as a single result set. Faceted Search: Search results are presented with the ability to narrow results by specific groupings found in the results

University of North Texas Audience Who is the target audience for a federated search tool? “At its heart, metasearch is about providing easy access for the user to complex resources. It is not a tool that allows librarians—or other expert users— to search with greater precision. It's not for us, it's for the average user.” From: Luther, Judy. “The Players,” Library Journal, October 1, 2003,

University of North Texas Expectations What are our expectations? –Federated Search is far from perfect –Federated Search is not precise in what it retrieves

University of North Texas Approaches Article Finder –University of Rochester –University of Texas Whole System Search –California Digital Library

University of North Texas Protocols Z39.50 –Library Catalog –Library Digital Collections SRU/SRW –Library Digital Collections OpenSearch –Library Website –Electronic Resource Database –Library Digital Collections Custom XML Gateways HTTP (Screen Scraping)

University of North Texas Federated Search System Knowledge Base Link Resolver Library CatalogDigital CollectionsLibrary Website Electronic Resources

University of North Texas Major Players [Webfeat] - WebFeat [Metalib] - Ex Libris Inc. [Zportal] - Fretwell-Downing Informatics [Central Search] - Serial Solutions [Research Pro] - Innovative Interfaces Inc. [Ovid SearchSolver™] - Ovid [Muse Metasearch] - Muse Global [Single Search] - Sirsi Corporation [Content Integrator] Vivisimo [Discovery: Finder] - Endeavor

University of North Texas Uses General undergraduate search system Subject specific search “portals” –Art –Music –Political Science –Biology

University of North Texas Issues Multiple query structures Multiple language sources Metadata differences Relevance ranking Lag/delay in responses Duplicate records

University of North Texas Examples

University of North Texas Questions?