Frank Cervone:
70% of all searches are keyword searches and they pretty much get article searches
Students don’t understand the concept of “metasearch” and federated
Federated product – good place to go for starters
students have strong expectations about how results should be displayed: relevance order – it’s the search engine model…
advanced users tend to head towards databses
If it’s not federated, it’s ignored. The hope is that people will click through to the native interface when appropriate
finding the right group of databases for subject areas is important
long lists of databases – students find them confusing and make them feel stupid
they group databases by “best bets” or the three major databases in any given topic area.
It’s critical that they work from the perspective of the patron.
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Jeff Wisniewski:
Webfeat – live since Sept 2004
majority of searches come from the quick find search on their website’s main page
They provide three access points: federated product, a-z list, and subject list
Google has set the speed standard – they get “it’s kinda slow” comments
Speed constraints – be selective – dont’ want a “earch all” when all equals 300+ databases
monitor usage stats, especially turnaways
implement a formal evaluation process
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Ying Zhang: MetaLib Implementations
spoke about her organization’s implementation of MetaLib
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Athena Hoeppner:
Usability aspects of their federated search product
Most users use the quick search feature
They believe customization would help – trying to label things differently
Metalib isn’t an ideal solution for them because of the lack of easy customization
They’d like to add lots of help features, add useful icons, and have the visual design mirror their website