Check it out and let us know what you think works, what doesn’t and what should be changed, by posting comments here on Counterculture.
Some things to note:
The interface that users see will vary depending on how they access federated searching. From the proposed new home page, Quick Search would be the default (in this view it is under Search by subject).
The databases for each subject were selected from “Key Databases” on the subject portals- let us know of any you’d like added or removed.
We have already requested the following changes:
Add Proquest500 to the databases in the QuickSearch category
Change the default search option to “Any” (it is currently title)
In the Basic search screen include a Drop down menu, with the default search option “Any”.
For the Law subject category, add the connector InfoTrac OneFile
Stop the url displayed in the browser’s url bar staying as the last serials solutions search url when you navigate away.
Fed Search
What determines which databases are covered?
There seem to be some there but not others.
Can Scirus be added or too much crossover with Scopus?
And when you choose by subject which ones does it choose?
BTW – they seem to be using arial narrow or some narrow font which is not readable on some browsers.
Seems to work btw
You might find it useful to refer to K:\projects\Federated_Searching_25\Serials Solutions 360 search\UC_Connection_List.xls as this details what databases we selected and under which subjects they appear (column J of the above spreadsheet). When you select the "search by subject" option click on one of the subjects to see which databases are grouped under that subject. K:\projects\Federated_Searching_25\Serials Solutions 360 search\ConnectionStatus.xls shows the current status of which databases are working, as per our original selection. As Caroline says we can add/subject databases bearing in mind there is a total limit of 50 overall – currently 36 working out of 43 requested (so far).
The ‘select all’ option at the top might encourage people to click it regardless of what they really want to search for? The tendancy for most people would be to click a ‘select all’ button if it is there on the assumption that they then would not miss out on anything. Could it be hidden, or put at the bottom?
Response speed seems a bit slow at present – must be a few of us on?
I clocked 1 min 40 sec to return search results for the following using Quicksearch:
Results 1-22 of 22 returned for "title contains carbon and footprint" (95 total with 1 duplicates)
…But quicker again now using Select All – so quite variable
The requested changes that Caroline notes above have been made – you should see this next time you go into 360 Search.
Tim – You still don’t quite answer my question. The list at K:\projects\Federated_Searching_25\Serials Solutions 360 search\UC_Connection_List.xls looks like a list of what SerSol are able to provide connections too. Is that correct? I am still not clear of which ones we have they are able to provide connections to or vice versa. I am also not clear or what the criteria are for the ones that were chosen. It seems to be a good idea – especially at undergrad level – but it would helpful to know why the databases chosen were chosen. I assume it is going to be something to do with how generally useful?
You are right that <<K:\projects\Federated_Searching_25\Serials Solutions 360 search\UC_Connection_List.xls>> is a list of everything SerSol can provide access to, and an X in column E indicates which databases we selected. At the bottom of this excel sheet are databases we would like to be able to add, but SerSol don’t yet provide connectors for.
As Caroline said in her initial posting "The databases for each subject were selected from “Key Databases” on the subject portals- let us know of any you’d like added or removed.". Basically we thought that the "key databases" people had selected on their subject portals was a useful starting point.
But we can make changes if people think our initial chosen selection isn’t suitable. It’s over to you to test it and come back to us with changes you would like to suggest (within the overall limit of 50 connectors).
I should also have mentioned this document <<K:\projects\Federated_Searching_25\Serials Solutions 360 search\Database usage.doc>> which may answer Adam’s question better in regard to the selection rationale for the chosen databases.
WE need to think and test carefully before deciding on QuickSearch as the default instead of the catalogue. Obviously both offer benefits and disadvantages – sometimes more is as frustrating as not enough.
Both approaches require explanations for users and still have the potential for people to give up.
Consider typical catalogue searches:
North and South (109) or Listener – this is with title selected.
course code searching?
Author searching – lynley hood or hood L
Students will need to be taught when to select the catalogue – is this any different to teaching them when to use Quicksearch? Lots of terminology to explain eg clusters
Also it would be nice to have an icon distinguishing books from articles.
Including Scirus and open access repositories like OAISTER, ROAR, Arrow, etc would be more useful than Google. People can and do search Google by themselves any time and it dominates search results
I would have to agree with DeirdreC. There are more useful resources out there than Google. And they may also include more than one of the other resources in the list (e.g. ArXiv). Examples might be http://www.scirus.com or http://www.worldwidescience… But can SerSol also handle these? Some more general resources (e.g. Bartleby) may be more use than subject specific ones such as Forest Sciene Abstracts?
oops spelt science incorrectly
Also although MathSciNet is relevant to a lot of sciences i would say more so at post-grad level. Perhaps we would be better with ACM Guide to Computing Literature which is more applied. And where is ABI/Inform? I would of thought that would have been a lot of use to many applied subjects?
A few more comments:
– It goes very slow. People hate slow.
– Sometimes the search never ends – just keeps ticking away and doesn’t seem to produce a result. From some screens it is not apparent it is still doing a search.
– Sometimes instead of results it just produces an empty white screen
– It does not indicate clearly anywhere that the default is a title search (I am guessing that it is)
– Some fonts are too narrow to read
This result looks a bit dodgy? – bad connection?
24.The impact of technology on the enactment of <img src="/giflibrary/12b/ldquo.gif" alt="ldquo" border="0" />inquiry<img src="/giflibrary/12b/rdquo.gif" alt="rdquo" border="0" /> in a technology enthusiast’s sixth grade science classroom
Noemi Waight; Fouad Abd-El-Khalick.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching
January 2007. Vol.44,Iss.1;p.154-182
Source: Wiley InterScience Journals
Show In Clusters
Export and E-mail options are pretty good and seem to work well
RefWorks option needs to be removed
SPAM gateway doesn’t seem to know
Fonts are about small
Could year option be changed to "From year 1234 to year 5678"?
The "select all" option was a question the customisation group had as well, putting it at the bottom instead. The inclusion of Google also sparked debate.
Perhaps those with a passion for including Google might like to speak to it?
We would like people to do some testing with Wiley Interscience and Pubmed. There was more than one connector option to choose from and we may have selected the wrong one.
We also selected InfoTrac OneFile as one connector instead of Expanded Academic and LegalTrac as two connectors. This may have implications for 360 Search.
RE: Criteria for database selection – isn’t this really about audience? Is Fed Search intended as a tool more for undergrads? If so that would change what databases are appropriate. Also is it intended to get more, less or equal promotion as Library Catalogue?
RE: Select All option – I would have thought the default should be all selected. Isn’t that the whole point of federated searching? Start broad then narrow down.
Subject groupings seem rather arbitrary – I assume they have come from the database groupings which have developed over time by need? Perhaps it would make more sense to only have groups by each of the Colleges (and School of Law) which could then have 7 databases in each list leaving the library catalogue and another 7 more general connections (but not Google!).
Re: Select all option. I see the point of Federated Searching as getting a manageable number of good results quickly. For this reason, I would recommend QuickSearch as the best option- a small group of broad databases has been selected to try to achieve the above aim. I suspect that using the Select All option would slow things down noticeably.
Re: Default search. SerialsSolution 360 comes with Title as the default search. This was on our first list of requested changes (see my Camelot posting) and has been changed to Any.
I am rendered fairly speechless by the searches I have done so far…not just by the time it takes but the nature of the results. It takes over minute for not only the first search but also the later searches also take a long time. The minimalist results are very hard to interpret. What clues are there for the student to know that these are good search results? I also tried the full text filter and found this did not work. We need to test how this would work in a classroom…i.e. with 20 people all trying a search at a similar time
I just scrolled through first screen of results (quite quickly) and clicked on "2" for next page and got a tiny tiny message – "Search session has expired or is no longer available. Please retry your search." Quite confusing. I like the concept of federated searching for particular purposes but there seem to be a few ‘killer’ problems that need resolving before we can do much with it.
Can we have the search summary screen shown by default at top of the search results page? This would allow a person who only wants items held at the library to easily see how to get to them.
Once I have done a search and clicked onto a particular databases results from the summary screen, it is not clear how I then go back to the list of all results. What am I missing?
Interesting that we have google, google images and google scholar as options! Seems a bit too many for me. What about having google scholar only…what about removing google altogether? I know that students use and like google (so do I) but if we are touting federated searching as a way to get "good results" I question having google there at all. If I am telling students that google is not usually the best place to go for ‘academic’ information, but then here it is on the federated searching list – given credibility by being in the list with all the databases.
Google Scholar is useful for physical sciences and linking to fulltext is very useful. If we have to have google images why stop at images? How about http://www.blinkx.com for video/audio? If we have to have a general search engine (preferably not as many people will search Google anyway) then it should probably be http://www.ask.com rather than google as generally the search returns better results.
Re Google – perhaps just include Scholar. Google images and plain old Google do seem to return far too much.