1. Evaluating Cross-database Search Tools Catherine Soehner, Head Christy Hightower, Engineering Librarian Science & Engineering Library University of California, Santa Cruz October 4, 2003 LITA National Forum

2. University of California 10 campuses 100’s of libraries California Digital Library

3. Our Users Want Easy, intuitive, fast All in one place Instant full text

4. Cross-database Searching at UC UC San Diego Database Advisor California Digital Library (CDL)

5. What We Wanted Customized for each campus Customized for each library Better functionality Duplicate removal Sorting Integration with full text and ILL Panic Button

6. The Panic Button IdeaPanic Designed to search: Full Text All subjects Small number of databases Undergraduate level

7. SearchLight Reloaded Project to evaluate commercial software to replace SearchLight

8. Process: Vendors Reviewed Web documentation Contacted each vendor Set up demo CDL Checklist Questionnaire

9. Interesting Vendor Responses Features R&D Personalization, alert services, vocabulary assistance, deduping, merging Technical infrastructure & programming R&D

10. Process: Customers Contacted customers Questionnaire

11. Interesting Customer Responses Wish List Interface Control Vendor Responsiveness

12. Final Product 30 page report evaluating 5 products Summary chart with top 18 featureschart Final decision Prototypes from top 3 vendors

13. 7 Interesting Features IP address authentication Number of databases searched Number of database categories allowed Merging and de-duping Sorting Auto-check for non-functioning databases Communication

14. Lessons Learned Raise expectations New market Technology ready to meet our imagination Ask pointed questions, such as: Can your software do X today? Keep asking!