One Box Fits All

The more I work with students, the more exciting the idea of a metasearch sounds. I pretested several of the English Writing students during the last period. Their response to how to find a book when they have a title, were things like "search that library database", "search on the library's main search", "ask a librarian", and so forth. The problem of course is there are catalogs and databases and they search different things.

A metasearch would search everything. At one point it seemed frivolous. After all, there's the catalog and it searches what the library has. That's a no brainer, right? (Seriously, even before I was a librarian, that was a no-brainer.) Except that it isn't. And add in dozens of databases and it muddies the waters even further.

Leaving me to draw the conclusion that a metasearch isn't necessarily a bad thing on library websites. And one box on the front page that searches the library's books, journal subscriptions, and possibly quality websites, isn't necessarily a bad thing either.