LawLibTech

According to Donna, "Federated searching aggregates multiple channels of information into a single searchable point. This blends e-journals, subscription databases, electronic print collections, other digital repositories, and the Internet."

The vendors in the federated search area such as MuseSearch and Webfeat offer their products as a way to search multiple, subscription resources at one time through an easy to use front-end. The user doesn't need to know which database offers a particular journal title or learn a search syntax for each service. The federated search product searches the services subscribed to by the researcher's library and returns a combined search results list.

While seen commonly in academic and public libraries, mainly for journal literature, federated searching is likely to become more popular in all kinds of libraries as a way to offer one search engine for a wide variety of premium research resources from many different vendors and web sites.

Have you noticed a reoccurring theme, whether it's Google, enterprise search engines or subscription resources? The ideal search engine returns results from a variety of sources without requiring the user to divine the appropriate source before searching.

Is there a federated search engine our your future? Let's hope so!