Personalized federated search tool?
Immersed as I am in the implementation of a federated search tool at my library, I had a random thought to throw out: are there any federated search tools that allow users to create and save their own unique clusters of databases (a custom search engine of favorite databases)? If so, it would be really cool if users could share their customized cluster with others. At my school, students are frequently working on group assignments, such as researching a company. It would be cool if one student could set up a cluster of databases to share with other members of the group.
posted by Stephen Francoeur @ 9:55 AM
3 Comments
Links to this post
3 Comments:
MetaLIB by ExLibris does -the user creates an account and can set up a their own set of cross searchable databases. Administrators can also set up databases to be saved as set and cross searched by users - we have many such sets set up. However, I don't think individual users can share them.
Thanks, Sarah! That's too bad that they can't be shared, though. I'd like to find more ways that our library resources can be made more social, that allow users to share what they've done or found.
I think that Ex Libris' Primo will let users tag databases, which kind of gets at the same idea. Primo isn't federated search, but if you had it and MetaLib, it would sit on top of fed. search.
I could see librarians creating groups / tags of databases for individual classes. I've done this a little bit with our database locator, and it seems to be a hit with students.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home