Improving EBook Access via a Library Developed FullText Search Tool

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Improving E-Book Access via a Library Developed
Full-Text Search Tool
Jill E. Foust, MLS Phillip Bergen, MA,
MS Gretchen L. Maxeiner, MA, MS Health Sciences
Library System University of Pittsburgh Peter N.
Pawlowski, BS, BA Vivisimo, Inc.
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Purpose
To allow the searching of electronic books across
providers at the full-text level
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What is Federated Searching?

• Allows users to search for documents from
  different resources simultaneously
• Both publicly available and subscription
  resources
• First generation

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Advantages of Federated Searching

• Simple search interface
• Good for basic searching
• Retrieves a few relevant articles, not
  necessarily the right article

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Disadvantages of Federated Searching

• No advanced search commands
• Limited detection of duplicates
• Inadequate relevancy ranking
• Updating and management of multiple
• licensed sources

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Why Electronic Books?

• Electronic books collections under-used
• Hospitals lack physical libraries
• Federated searching
• Possible to miss valuable information

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Vivísimohttp//www.vivisimo.com
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Vivísimo Results Screen
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Electronic Book Search

• Developed by librarians
• Requires authorization to view full text
• XML (Extensible Markup Language)

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Vivísimo Software Tools

• Spider and search engine
• Content Integrator
• Clustering Engine
• Customizable user interface

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Current Collections

• Books_at_Ovid
• Elsevier ScienceDirect
• MD Consult
• STAT!Ref
• Wiley InterScience

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Electronic Book Searchhttp//www.hsls.pitt.edu/re
sources/ebooks/titles
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Main Search Screen
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Electronic Book Search Help
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Electronic Book Titles
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Titles by Provider
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Electronic Books Search Results Screen
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Results by Source
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Limitations

• No advanced searching
• Limited number of results
• Clusters on titles on results page only

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Challenges

• Titles in some collections must be
• programmed separately
• Ongoing maintenance
• Licensing issues

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Evaluation

• Initial testing by librarians was favorable
• User search log analysis over first six week
  period
• 318 total searches
• 85 legitimate searches
• Unsuitable searches
• 28 searched on Clustered Results
• 20 viewed Help

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Conclusion

• Facilitate and increase use of electronic
• book collections
• Unique project
• Easy to use

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Future

• Better search capabilities
• Possibly adding more electronic
• book collections