Computers in Libraries Report: Federated Searching and Open URL I attended the Computers in Libraries conference yesterday sponsored by Information Today. I had a great time and learned a lot. Here's a brief summary of the sessions I attended:
B201: Federated Searching and Open URL. (description) This pretty much hasn't changed since I last heard about it. Basically, OpenURL lets you put a link on the search results page of a bibliographic database so that when you click it goes to a resolver to lookup the best place to find full text and then redirects to that location. It's pretty labor intensive entering and maintaining the information but is very helpful. Federated searching is kind of like the old Z39.50 searching like we had/have on MdUSA and it also can work like OpenURL. If you really customize it, the searcher can pick a category of search and the search will just be carried out on relevant databases. What might be the next step is for the computer to do an analysis of the request and automatically pick the databases. De-duping has to be setup, too. Nice, but not for the advanced searcher. Really for the undergrad only.  ¶ 9:25 AM| |cites (technorati) |