Unifying Information

The Right Solution: Federated Search Tools "I believe that federated or cross-database search tools now available on the market are the correct solution for unifying access to a variety of information resources...Representative players in this market space are MuseGlobal, Endeavor, Ex Libris, WebFeat, and Fretwell-Downing. All have products that unify searching of a variety of databases (known as "targets"). They also provide additional services such as authentication, merging, and de-duping."

"In the case of a large academic library, an effective discovery service may require searching a number of institutional repositories...While most such repositories support a standard that allows metadata to be harvested, it is not a searching protocol like Z39.50. In order to point a federated search tool at repositories such as these, a library would first need to harvest the metadata from the repositories of interest and make that metadata available to the federated search tool as a searchable target. In such a case, the library would be engaged in target creation."