Next Gen Discovery Tools Notes by P. Watkins

Roundtable Discussion about federated searching ... 

• A quick survey found that those in attendance are using EBSCO, Primo or EOS, WorldCat for discovery of library resources.
• Nautilus mentioned as 'awful' by one who found it was well-used, but slow with results.
• Federated searching not much used by libraries, hard to get into a consortium that uses it, some are skeptical about its development in the past few years; others feel "nothing works right" or "it's still in its infancy",
• One college uses Serial Solutions' Summon system, but was disappointed with messages indicating a resource 'does not exist' even though it is in the collection; problems with not showing what it was searching; system did not bring up LexisNexis results; only a few options available for narrowing the search.
• Others mentioned Innovative Interface's  search solution which uses 'google-ized' catalog overlays ... Serials Solutions 360 federated search; and OCLC's ZPortal federated search.
• For more on this topic, I conducted a search in our Emerald database for 'federated searching' and found these: Managing the implementation of a federated search tool in an academic library by Nicholas Joint, Andersonian Library, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. Library Review, Vol. 58 No 1, 2009, pp. 10-16; and, Usability study of a federated search product at Punjab University, Author(s): Nosheen Fatima Warraich, Kanwal Ameen, Muzammil Tahira, Library Hi Tech News, 2009, Vol 26, Issue 9, Pages 14 - 15.