PETER NOERR CTO, Muse Global Federated Searching is an exciting growth area in searching, and it is moving front and centre in almost every search tool around, offering immense coverage, strong results refinement, and a great way to save time for the important things in life.

Federated Search comes of Age? Its been around for ages –Well, 8 – 9 years Healthy vendor market –5/6 specialist vendors –10 or so “we do it” Market coverage –All ILS vendors –5%-10% of libraries –50% of Content Providers Proven technology Source coverage –±5,000 in total (25- 4,000 range) Technology is fragile –Connections constantly breaking It’s cumbersome to use –Not like Google; you have to choose –All that setting up Market Coverage (lack of in:) –80% of libraries –Virtually all enterprise It’s not that useful –All those extra results It’s inflexible –Won’t fit in my portal It’s expensive Yup, it’s all grow’d upNo, it’s not there yet

Value? It saves lots of time –About 50% More complete information –Creates virtual records Refine and drill down –Tools to reduce the bulk Search in the right places –Only where the good stuff is Integrates its data well –Export and link to other systems Integrates itself well –Add as a value to any Application Searching the native database gets better answers Too steep a learning curve Maintenance is a costly nightmare (full time) GYM can do everything it can It can only search library catalogs Subscription databases, huh!!! Worth its weight in goldWorth its weight