The year 2011 was the PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) consortium's "rookie season" for the implementation of Primo, the 2010 Discovery Layer 500 race winner. In this article, the authors report on their transition to the cloud within Ex Libris Ltd.'s Primo TotalCare environment: their preparation, the steps involved…

In this article, the author contends that in 10 years, federated search--or search of any kind for that matter--won't exist. He elaborates that the "function" of search will exist--but not in a context with which anyone is familiar today. So if "search" doesn't exist in 2018, how will people find the information that they need across vast volumes…

This article describes the Project Lefty, a search system that, at a minimum, adds a layer on top of traditional federated search tools that will make the wait for results more worthwhile for researchers. At best, Project Lefty improves search queries and relevance rankings for web-scale discovery tools to make the results themselves more relevant…

Discusses various search strategies and tools that can be used for searching on the Internet, including search engines and search directories; Boolean searching; metasearching; relevancy ranking; automatic phrase detection; backlinks; natural-language searching; clustering and cataloging information; image searching; customization and portals;…

ScanGrants (www.scangrants.com) is a free, online listing of grants, scholarships, and other types of funding in the health sciences. It is basically a launch pad for anyone looking for money to fund medical research or community/public health projects, or to finance their education in various healthcare fields. The goal is to enable researchers,…

Outlines the features and drawbacks of Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS). Praises the ease of use for end users and the variety of documents and other information available, but cautions users about searching problems resulting from the use of relevance ranking schemes. Calls for greater librarian involvement. (EA)

Describes a study of the retrieval results of World Wide Web search engines. Research quantified accurate matches versus matches of arguable quality for 200 subjects relevant to undergraduate curricula. Both "evaluative" engines (Magellan, Point Communications) and "nonevaluative" engines (Lycos, InfoSeek, AltaVista) were…

Today's world demands an expansive search environment. The universe of information resources is immense and is growing rapidly. The content needed for research and scholarship is dispersed among publishers, aggregators, repositories, library catalogs, e-print servers, and servers throughout the Web. Users do not want to jump from one interface to…

Defines a metasearch tool as one that simultaneously searches multiple search engines or directories and gives the end user a single integrated set of results. Focuses on end-user searching at public-access terminals and compares and evaluates 16 metasearch tools currently available on the World Wide Web. (LRW)

In an attempt to make the Kansas City Public Library's Web site more user friendly, the Web team took an opportunity to completely redesign the site. This article describes the techniques that the team used to organize and design the new Web site. By adopting a guided approach to the Internet, they were able to streamline their Web links and…

In World Wide Web indexing: (1) the creation process is automated; (2) the indexes are merely descriptive, not analytical of document content; (3) results may be sorted differently depending on the search engine; and (4) indexes link directly to the resources. This article compares the indexing methods and querying options of the search engines…

Illustrates how users can take full advantage of the Internet to communicate and to network. Discusses electronic mailing, listservs and Usenet groups; referring cold connections to a Web page; and designing Web pages for maximum information retrieval by search engines. (AEF)

Introduces the information superhighway (the Internet), and presents a guide to navigating it. Offers basic instruction on obtaining and learning to use network accounts; locating addresses using Archie and Wide Area Information Server; retrieving information using file transfer protocol; utilizing Gopher to find and retrieve; browsing the World…

The author of this article is an automation librarian, but at times he also works at the reference desk, as well as teaching library instruction and literacy classes. Working at the reference desk, he learns how users handle their library's information technology. This article explores the conclusions that the author has reached regarding the…