30
Jul
Library open source solution vendor, LibLime, announced yesterday that they and CARE Affiliates
“have entered into a definitive agreement to sell select assets of CARE Affiliates to LibLime. The sale will include select products, related services and domain names along with associated service contracts. Final closing is scheduled for August 2008.”
Like CARE Affiliates, LibLime provides open source solutions to libraries, and the acquisition should, according to the press release, “ensure the continuation of [CARE's] products/services well into the future.”
See Carl Grant’s blog article of this morning for his thoughts on the move.
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21
May
In a recent article, Infotech reported that Oxford, Cambridge, and Stanford have each announced federated search systems.
The press releases provide some insight into what was important to each of them:
- Ex Libris issued a press release, on May 5, announcing that Oxford had chosen its Metalib product.
- WebFeat (now part of Serials Solutions) announced, on April 30, that Cambridge had chosen WebFeat Express.
- Stanford ‘s March 27 press release announced a partnership with Deep Web Technologies (this blog’s sponsor).
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7
Mar
Most libraries in the University of Wisconsin (UW) system use Ex Libris’ MetaLib to provide federated search service to its users and now UW is putting MetaLib to the test. UW is performing a MetaLib assessment to determine the overall usefulness of MetaLib as a research tool.
By August 21, the MetaLib Assessment Working group, charged with the usefulness study, will deliver its final report of its findings. The Assessment Wiki notes four key expectations of its investigation:
- Conduct a review of the literature and summarize the empirical research that 1) assesses usability of and user response to federated search tools and 2) analyzes user expectations about searching for information in general
- Develop a protocol for assessing the usefulness of MetaLib as a research tool as compared to other library research tools
- Deploy this protocol with selected groups of users in selected UW libraries
- Summarize and report key findings
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11
Jan
The ALA Midwinter Meeting starts January 11. Aside from the presentations I wrote about earlier a number of federated search vendors are exhibiting at the conference, and some of these vendors are announcing new product launches, giving talks and demonstrating their products. Here are some links to vendor information about their involvement with the conference:
If you know of others let me know and I’ll add an update to this post.
