Wisnewski and Cervone
, “Federated Search: State of the Art” (A304)
Federated searching protocols: Z39.50, SRU/SRW, OAI, and XML gateways.
Most federated searches allow for simple and advance searches, combine results sets with deduplication, and some statistics.
Advanced features for federated searches: integration with other software, such as courseware and RefWorks; context sensitive linking.
Top players: Ex Librirs, Webfeat, all WebFeat partners, Total WebFeat.
Proquest CSA has metasearch by topic, so you can search multiple databases based on the subject (such as humanities).
Ovid SearchSolver: based on Muse technology, is hosted, and results are post-processed.
Medline has faceted browsing. (check it out)
Ex Libris (loves) Endeavor, and creates MetaLib, SFX, and Primo, all at www.exlibrisgroup.com/(name).htm
Metalib 4.0 has faced browsing, and its interface will eventually be replaced with Primo.
Aquabrowser is a unique interface that is part clusty type linked terms and part catalog.
III has Encore, which includes tag clouds which includes phrases (LCSH) as well as individual words (keywords)
WebFeat Express is a hosted version of WebFeat Prism price “affordably” at $8000. It has limited conform/adaptability compared to Prism.
Who else is in the game: AGent – Auto-graphics Inc and many others.
Other companies are marketing federated searches to large companies outside of libraryland to help their knowledge management. Inktomi (old name) has Universal Repository Interfacing, Siderian, with its Seamark Navigator, and Endeca.
Trends:
- Number of vendors is shrinking
- Migration to XML from Z39.50, tho Z30.50 still prevails
- Integrating content with external systems such as WebCT and RefWorks
- Increased use of visualization and clustering
- More off-site hosting possibilities
- Data pre-processing options
- Free versions with Google scholar and Microsoft Academic Live.
Their ending question is much like mine; why do a federated search when the big search engines have scholarly versions.
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