Florida Electronic Library Florida Union Catalog Commercial database products Government information Virtual Reference Services Digital Collections Search Engine Directory: where and how to locate information

MyLibraryServices.org Hosted by SEFLIN Underlying Technology: WebFeat Provides access to 25 member library systems in the 5 county Southeast region of Florida serving 5 million library users Combined holdings: 11.6 million volumes Project began in 2000

Alleycat Hosted by the Tampa Bay Library Consortium Utilizes Z39.50 based technology Provides access to 40 library systems in 12 counties serving 3.8 million library users Combined Holdings: 8.3 million Project began in 1999

Florida Group Catalog State-wide pilot hosted by the Division of Library and Information Services Union Catalog based on Florida library holdings in WorldCat 17 participating library systems serving 8.1 million library users Combined Holdings: 28 million Project began October, 2002

Testing Functionality Contracted with the Information use Management and Policy Institute, School of Information Studies, Florida State University Purpose: Conduct a study on Union Catalog Functionality evaluating the three approaches implemented in Florida Report available at

Methodology Focused on selected functions and features to determine the extent to which the pilot projects meet certain functional specifications; Reviewed the extent to which the pilot projects meets accessibility criteria the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act; and Provided selected assessments regarding the extent to which the pilot projects accurately search and retrieve individual library OPACs.

Functionality 1.Ability to group—prior to searching, user can delimit pending results listing, grouping them by item characteristics such as type or format; 2.Limiting—user can limit searches by library (e.g. selecting a specific library or group of libraries, limiting by types of libraries or locations of libraries, etc.); 3.Search process options—user can perform basic and advanced searches; searches can be done by subject, author, keyword, and title; 4.Stated location and availability of resources—results include the name of the lending institution and the availability, call number, and format of the item retrieved; 5.Languages—search can be performed in a language or languages other than English;

Functionality 6.Ability to refine searches—user can search results at a greater level of specificity once results have been retrieved, thus focusing and reducing the number of items retrieved; 7.Support/instructions/help tools—instructional rubrics guide users through the search process; 8.Save/print functions—users can save or entire results listing or select portions of the results list and can print results in whole or by selection; 9.Accessibility—interface and functionality comply with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) accessibility guidelines; and 10.Equivalence of results—same items are retrieved across the virtual union catalog portal and native online public access catalogs (OPACs).

Results: Aggregate Score

Other Findings Centralized catalogs are efficient No Single Interface does it all Web design must be intuitive Union Catalogs best positioned when working to support services, not strictly a reference resource

Questions Contact information: Mark Flynn State Library of Florida Phone: (850)