TY - JOUR
T1 - Do we step together, in the same direction, at the same time? How a consortium approached a federated search implementation
AU - Mestre, Lori S.
AU - Turner, Christine
AU - Lang, Beth
AU - Morgan, Barbara
N1 - Funding Information:
The Five College Librarians’ Council (FCLC), comprised of the individual library directors and the director of Five Colleges Inc., advocate for funding from their home institutions, make strategic decisions and allocate money for their joint projects. They authorize nine standing committees of librarians from each library to monitor, advise, and in some cases make decisions about emerging issues and functional matters affecting the libraries and their user communities. One of these is the Reference, Instruction and Outreach Committee (RIO), which among other things, has been charged by the FCLC to design the public interfaces of new Five College Libraries services and technologies. Another is the Digital Environment Development Coordinating Committee (DEDCC). DEDCC “exists to improve user access, service delivery and creation of digital collections for the Five College Libraries through the use of existing and emerging technologies” (Charge, http://www. fivecolleges.edu/sites/libraries_dedcc/). In addition, FCLC empowers working groups to manage particular projects, such as the SFX Implementation Group, the MetaLib Implementation Group, and the Aleph Implementation Committee.
PY - 2007/9/26
Y1 - 2007/9/26
N2 - The Five College Libraries of Western Massachusetts have a long-standing tradition of collaborating on technology projects which improve our communities' access to information resources. After investigating various link resolver and federated search products in 2002, the Five College Librarians' Council signed a three-year contract with Ex Libris in spring 2003 to host SFX link resolver and MetaLib federated search installations. Following a very successful implementation of SFX in 2003, the Libraries took on the MetaLib implementation in 2004. From the perspective of one participating library, this article addresses how the Consortia planned, made decisions, and took actions regarding this product. Some of the common interests discussed are interface design, usability, resource description, performance settings, product upgrades and customer support, as well as individual library concerns about purpose and presentation among other Web-based tools, categorizing resources, affect on resource terms of use, and user support.
AB - The Five College Libraries of Western Massachusetts have a long-standing tradition of collaborating on technology projects which improve our communities' access to information resources. After investigating various link resolver and federated search products in 2002, the Five College Librarians' Council signed a three-year contract with Ex Libris in spring 2003 to host SFX link resolver and MetaLib federated search installations. Following a very successful implementation of SFX in 2003, the Libraries took on the MetaLib implementation in 2004. From the perspective of one participating library, this article addresses how the Consortia planned, made decisions, and took actions regarding this product. Some of the common interests discussed are interface design, usability, resource description, performance settings, product upgrades and customer support, as well as individual library concerns about purpose and presentation among other Web-based tools, categorizing resources, affect on resource terms of use, and user support.
KW - Consortia
KW - Cooperative library systems
KW - Federated searching
KW - Internet searching
KW - Internet/college and university libraries
KW - Networks of libraries
KW - Online searching
KW - Usability testing
KW - Web portals
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=34948897991&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=34948897991&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1300/J136v12n01_06
DO - 10.1300/J136v12n01_06
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:34948897991
SN - 1087-5301
VL - 12
SP - 111
EP - 132
JO - Internet Reference Services Quarterly
JF - Internet Reference Services Quarterly
IS - 1-2
ER -