1. Surfing Metadata – Research Tsunami or Glad Tide-ings? Vince Price Vice President, Editorial Ops Brenda Reeb Director, Management Library Charleston Conference, 2004

2. It is possible to create a super index of all scholarly articles just as Google has created an index to virtually every page on the web.

3. Federated search will eventually replace direct access to individual databases.

4. Technology Tools and Relevance Programmatic Benefits Index Benefits One Order of Magnitude Change

5. Required Research Time Undergrad Find 5 relevant hits from 891 total hits Scholar Find 12 relevant hits from 891 total hits

6. Libraries have a responsibility to educate. Federated search and the hope that it delivers “good enough” results is a lazy goal.

7. Vendors must compromise quality in indexing and abstracting to support federated search.

8. Vendors lose brand recognition and therefore sales when vendor content is delivered exclusively through federated search tools.

9. There will soon be a Federated search product that is available off the shelf and effective. Libraries will be able to buy it and turn it on with modest support required within the library.

10. Federated search is only useful to novice users.

11. We need to build systems that users enjoy using as much as they enjoy Google.

12. In current websites and databases it is very easy for users to fail. Improved usability of web sites and native interfaces should be a higher priority than content expansion.