Walter Warnick
Walter elegantly restated the case for federated searching NOT being dead! We may be fed up with products, but the need for a means to cross search TONS or resources--in his case, 60 government databases--will only continue to increase.
Laura Solomon
OPLIN initially implemented WebFeat in 2004; after a couple of years, librarians were fed up. Changes had been made to WebFeat, but Solomon wasn't satisfied. They also looked at Google Custom Search Beta is nifty, but of course, it can't log in to our databases.
Along comes MasterKey--runs on Pazpar 2 engine, hosting is available. Pazpar 2 engine also provides record merging, relevance ranking, record sorting, facted results.
Did usability via Kent State usability lab; folks wanted Google down to the link colors! My sidesnark: did they want fake ads?! :)
The pieces of the homemade:
OpenTranslators (WebFeat's, sold through another vendor whose name I missed)
Yahoo spellchecker API
EZproxy
Custom page design
Custom scripting
Paid: customization of the Pazpar 2 engine; ongoing cost: annual fee of translators
In action:
http://www.ohioweblibrary.org
Stephen Abram noted where Pazpar 2 comes from.
Thanks for blogging the session! As for the fake ads, I can't say, as I don't think that came up in the study, but it sure wouldn't surprise me...
ReplyDeleteLaura Solomon
Hey, Laura! :) That sidesnark was at *them*, not you, obviously. Great session!!!
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