Hello folks
We just got an email press release from Hein today announcing its partnership with Serials Solutions.
The press release is here:
http://www.serialssolutions.com/press/press10-18-07.pdf
I wonder what Hein means when it says:
“William S. Hein & Co., Inc. announces the availability of the first direct and authorized federated search connection”…
I could be wrong here, but I think they are trying to suggest to us that perhaps our digging into Hein collections by any other federated search would be “unauthorized”.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but the mere suggestion irritates me. How else are library users supposed to know what’s available to them in online aggregators? This really suggests to me a lack of appreciation for how integral a federated search can be for today’s library.
Wikipedia: “Federated search is the simultaneous search of multiple online databases and is an emerging feature of automated, Web-based library and information retrieval systems.”
Federated searches work within a broad array of online collections. This is their only function. A federated search has to work between multiple products so that users can see what articles are available among the library’s many online collections. The mere suggestion that each individual product should have its own “authorized” federated search is counter-intuitive. The idea just completely defeats the purpose, and can’t be called a federated search. If Hein wants to beef up its searching and results displaying functions – please do it by all means, but it bothers me that they are trying to steer us towards using Serials Solutions which seems, by these shenanigans, to be trying to get its foot in the door by selling this notion of “authorized search”.
In my opinion, it also impugns the integrity of plenty of other library finding tools – even the OPAC to a certain extent is evolving into a tool to help us find content in the collections we’ve already paid for.
In what other context are libraries asked to pay for the journal plus the right to turn its pages?