Final Speaker: Joseph Fisher, Electronic Resources Librarian, Boston Public Library

Boston Public is one of only two public library members of ARL (New York Public is the other). They provide access to over 120 online databases, with 95 available remotely, plus 4 in-house databases. They also provide access to the statewide Digital Commonwealth, an archive of digital collections from around the state.

Boston Public uses the WebFeat federated search tool. There is not that much technical work required locally, WebFeat handles most of it for them. Some problems include:

–Speed is limited by the slowest connection
–Results lack consistency
–Results from some sources can be hidden or lost
–A search is only as good as the lowest common denominator

Fisher showed us the management screen, and proceeded to demo the Boston Public implementation of WebFeat including the usage statistics interface.

I have a line in my notes here that reads: “Post WebFeat: increasing integrating Google Scholar and link resolvers” but don’t recall the context.

To view the Boston Public WebFeat implmentation, see http://www.bpl.org/electronic/

The first speaker then returned and summarized the entire program. A brief Q&A followed. One question asked about products that (for technical or other reasons) can’t be included in a single search. Speakers indicated these still posed a problem: how to display such resources in the federated search system. Generally a “link and search” approach is used.

This was a very popular session. The room was quite full initially, although folks left after each speaker.