User Perceptions of Federated Search

User Perception of MetaLib Combined Search
Rong Tang
Simmons College

Study
Investigate user perception of Metalib combined search in the environment of Washington Research Library Consortium

Methodology – user a questionnaire and screen shots. Respondents answered questions related to the search process and drew a sketch ti illustrate their understanding of system operation.

Objectives
Understand users perceptions of Metalib
Compare librarians and students perceptions of federated searching process
Identify areas of confusion and explore the implications for delivering information literacy program.

Uses of Metalib combined search
Students used it for full text
Librarians used it for additional search after a fruitless search
Some use it for quick search

Useful but hard to figure out: 69% of Students
Not useful & hard to figure out: Library ~40%
Only 27% of the students mentioned the presence of “Find It” button, even thought 85% of them indicated that MCS is used to locate full text.

Librarians used technical terms to explain the process
Students were more interested in obtaining full text through federated searching. Librarians paid more attention to retrieval performance, search strategies and relevance ranking.

If we are going to do federated searching, we should do a study of our own. This does not look to be generalizable.

Students
Learn background
System operation
Search strategies
Practice

Librarians
Teach
Background

Design Implications
Make explicit the retrieval and ranking procedures
Search results are produced in batches
Make more results option available on each display screen
MCS relevance ranking is not based on the entire combined results
Provide multiple search support mechanisms
Findit button design
Implies full text is available, needs to be only available when it will work
Cluster search results and use visualization tools to facilitate use