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ABOUT THE PROJECT

The Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent federal agency that grows and sustains a "Nation of Learners," because lifelong learning is critical to success.

“Only librarians like to search;
everyone else likes to find.”
-- Roy Tennant

Federated Search is Flawed
Library users today have high expectations Of discoverability, especially when search engines like Google and commercial sites like Amazon and E-bay have developed to such a high degree of result, speed, accuracy and ease of use. The current federated search solutions have proven less than satisfactory for end-users and information providers alike.

The paradigm results in:

• Unnecessary/irrelevant server traffic.
• Skewed usage statistics
• Search structure incompatibility
• Relevancy ranking issues
• De-duping of problems

A Fresh Approach
NELLCO, an international consortium of law libraries, has been awarded a National Leadership Grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to develop a new approach to discovery. The NELLCO search solution will result in the creation of a master index of material, including participating library OPAC’s, web-based free and subscription-based material, local electronic content and other e-content that a participating library wishes to make discoverable to researchers.

Access will still be carefully controlled through proven authentication methods and only authorized users will gain access to proprietary content.

To create the master index, NELLCO will work with Index Data, our development partner, and our information provider partners to develop formatting standards for various types of data to be indexed. The end result will be a single box interface for searching and an attractive graphical user interface for search results.

Contact Information

For general questions, please contact either of the following people:

Tracy Thompson
NELLCO Executive Director
E: tracy.thompson@yale.edu
P:  603-357-3385 

For technical discussions/questions, please contact David Dorman at:
E: dorman@indexdata.com
P:  860-389-1568