Single Search Interface

Another session that I attended was "Is One Stop Shopping all we Dreamed it would be? The Single Search Interface in Action" on Saturday, June 17, 2006. The title was a bit misleading, since it was really on usability testing, in my opinion.

One speaker was from Library and Archives Canada (LAC), and she discussed changes to the LAC web site, specifically a federated search. She expressed how important it was to conduct usability tests at every step of the project. Out of all the feedback that she received, perhaps the comment that stuck with me the most was that archivists, generally speaking, preferred to go directly to a specific web site or database instead of using the search interface.

Another speaker presented the results of her surveys from an academic library. Being from UBC Library, and working on virtual reference, I have been exposed to federated search tools, so I was really interested to hear what she thought. At the time, I was using MultiSearch, but it appears that it has been discontinued. One argument in favour of federated searching that I had not considered was that a library can provide its visitors with a uniform search interface, which may help its users navigate and search because they do not have to learn how to use varying database interfaces. An obvious point, but I had previously evaluated federated searching from the perspective of what it allowed me to do on virtual reference. Federated searching helped me identify databases that likely had a concentration of articles on a given topic quickly. I think federated searching is a tool that needs to evolve a bit more, but I also think that it will help interdisciplinary studies.