Broadcast Searching vs. Federated Searching

The latest fad (and need) in today's bibliographic world is "federated searching". Many vendors will say that they have a federated searching product. In fact, nearly all products provide federated results, but do not provide federated searching. It is more accurate to refer to the searching as "broadcast searching" rather than federated searching.

Broadcast Searching

The search is sent to various remote systems. Results are retrieved, normalized, merged, possiblly de-duplicated, and then displayed.

Examples:

• Colorado Virtual Library: http://www.coloradovirtuallibrary.org/ [Searches across CO OPACs]
• WebCrawler: http://www.webcrawler.com/ [InfoSpace] [Searches across Web search engines]
• Dogpile: http://www.dogpile.com/ [InfoSpace] [Searches across Web search engines]
• MetaCrawler: http://www.metacrawler.com/ [InfoSpace] [Searches across Web search engines]
• Serials Solutions 360 Search: http://0-jc3th3db7e.cs.serialssolutions.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/

Some popular vendors using Broadcast Search technologies for libraries:

• WebFeat: http://www.webfeat.org/ [WebFeat was bought out by Serials Solutions, but is no longer available]
• 360 Search: http://www.serialssolutions.com/ss_360_search.html [formerly known as Central Search, this is also a Serials Solutions product]
• ResearchPro: http://www.iii.com/products/research_pro.shtml [Innovative Interfaces]
• MetaLib: http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/MetaLibOverview [MetaLib is an ExLibris product]
• Winthrop University Library has articles embedded within their Encore catalog: http://encore.winthrop.edu/. This is a broadcast search embedded within a catalog search.
• MetaLib at Colorado State University: http://metalib.library.colostate.edu/V/?func=quick-1&mode=simple

At Penrose Library, previously implemented 360 Search. It still works:

http://0-jc3th3db7e.cs.serialssolutions.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/

Federated Searching

Records are first harvested from various remote sites by a harvesting system. Searches are then done against this result set. Users are then sent out to the ultimate result.

Google is federated searching. You are searching a federation of indexing of millions of Web pages. Also Google Scholar (click here to experience Scholar with DU settings set for you.) and Google Books are federated searches.

Other examples of library-related federated searches.:

• LibraryFind [federation of metadata at Oregon State University Library] - NO LONGER EXISTS - they switched to Summon
• Homeland Security Digital Library [federation of metadata AND actual full text documents]

• Summon from Serials Solutions
• Primo Central from Ex Libris
• EBSCO Discovery Service from EBSCO

• Also Encore Synergy from Innovative Interfaces, Inc. - but this is really a broadcast search tool.
• OCLC has their WorldCat Local product. They consider it a Web-scale discover tool, but I do not.

• University of Denver: http://du.summon.serialssolutions.com/
• Dartmouth College: http://dartmouth.summon.serialssolutions.com/
• Columbia University: http://columbia.summon.serialssolutions.com/
• University of Missouri: http://missouri.summon.serialssolutions.com/
• University of Michigan: http://umich.summon.serialssolutions.com/
• Arizona State University: http://asu.summon.serialssolutions.com/
• Drexel University: http://drexel.summon.serialssolutions.com/
• Grand Valley State University: http://gvsu.summon.serialssolutions.com/
• Duke University: http://duke.summon.serialssolutions.com/
• Cornell University: http://cornell.summon.serialssolutions.com/

The Three Googles

1. Google Web: www.google.com

• Find primary materials by doing site-specific searches.
• Top-level domains can be found here: http://www.norid.no/domenenavnbaser/domreg.en.html
• Examples:

2. Google Scholar: scholar.google.com

• Searches full text of a huge corpus of scholarly publications
• Configure Google Scholar for off-campus searching by following these directions: http://library.du.edu/FindIt/ResearchGuides/rg_main.cfm?rg_id=235 [this is the Google Scholar Research Guide on the Penrose Library Web site]
• Look for “ U. of Denver fulltext” links. This is Article Linker, from which you can link to DU licensed full text content.
• Allows for interlibrary loan for materials not owned by DU
• Works with RefWorks for saving and formatting bibliographic citations

3. Google Books: books.google.com

• Allows for full text searching of large portions of major library book content.
• Four levels of access: full view, limited preview, snippet view, no preview.
• Links to Penrose Library holdings: Look for “Find this book in a library” on right navigation bar.

The Information Access Anomaly: Books vs. Periodicals

1 Ave. 400 pages per book (http://www.writersservices.com/wps/p_word_count.htm)

Other Innovative Search Utilities

• Open WorldCat - World's largest federation of metadata. http://www.worldcat.org/ OR search Google like this: site:worldcat.org your topic. Note: you can set open WorldCat to show libraries from any area of the country. You can easily set Penrose Library as your home library.
• WorldCat Local - University of Washington Libraries. http://www.lib.washington.edu/ Searches local holdings in the OCLC database.