Find High Quality Information More Quickly: Use Federated Search Prototypes Developed for Stanford
by Grace Baysinger, Tom Cramer, Adan Griego, Phil Schreur
Effective and intuitive ways of discovering information are a growing challenge in the age of the digital library. With the sheer abundance of resources present, the issue is no longer finding related resources, but rather finding the most relevant resources to further insights and research work.
Internet search engines like Google identify and index only a fraction of all the information that is available on the Web. The "invisible web" is made up of thousands of resources such as databases, e-journal aggregators, and news archives that contain valuable information and whose content is inaccessible and therefore neither seen nor indexed by traditional search engines. While resources acquired by the Stanford University Libraries include a trove of valuable resources, most are part of the invisible web.
Prototype Federated Search Service
To help scholars at Stanford spend less time searching for relevant information, a prototype federated search service has been released by the Stanford University Libraries and Deep Web Technologies. After a user enters search terms into an intuitive search interface, resources held across many different, isolated systems are searched at one time, information is organized, and up to 100 items per resource are merged in one ranked priority list. This gives scholars a quick and broad view across a number of possible sources, letting them identify the most promising areas and resources in which to extend their search.
Demos of Federated Search at Stanford
Three demonstrations of federated search within the Stanford environment are now available:
All Library Catalogs at Stanford - Combined search for these catalogs: Socrates, Jackson Business, Lane Medical, SLAC, and Health Library of the Stanford Hospital and Clinics.
"Top 10" Databases at Stanford - Combined search that includes some popular databases from the 800+ databases available at Stanford: ABI/Inform (Business), Annual Reviews, Biosis, Dissertations & Theses (Abstracts & Indexes), Engineering Village, Expanded Academic ASAP, Lexis Nexis Academic (News), Periodicals Archive Online, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. (Access is limited to current Stanford students, faculty, and staff.)
Stanford Digitized Content - Cross collection search of digital collections listed on http://collections.stanford.edu.
Feedback Welcomed
We welcome any feedback you have on this initiative.
For More Information
For more information, please see:
RaPIDs Group, Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources
