Evaluation of federated searching options for the school library

Three hosted federated search tools, Follett One Search, Gale PowerSearch Plus, and WebFeat Express, were configured and implemented in a school library. Databases from five vendors and the OPAC were systematically searched. Federated search results were compared with each other and to the results of the same searches in the database's native interface to disclose differences in handling query syntax, searching, retrieval, browsing results, etc. Each product was easily configured, but none were capable of searching every database desired. Simpler Boolean queries are the most successful queries because of the underlying structure and differences of the databases, and the capabilities of certain products. Federated search products succeed in simplifying access to multiple database resources at school, but searching remains different from the familiar Web search engines in many ways. To become more Google-like, federated searching must be done against indexes built in advance instead of the current real-time searching method.