[HeinOnline listserv] HeinOnline and Federated Search Engines

[heinonline at lists.washlaw.edu]

Dear HeinOnline subscribers,

Recently, several subscribers have contacted us about HeinOnline's
compatibility with federated search engines and the value of federated
search engines in the library community in general. We would like to take
this opportunity to address this matter with the entire HeinOnline
community.

First of all, we welcome the opportunity to work with the various providers
of federated search engines in an effort to enhance the online research
experience of your library's patrons. After all, the idea of the "perfect
search engine" that can efficiently and most importantly, ACCURATELY provide
results would be welcome by all; publishers and libraries alike.

However, unless a federated search engine provider has worked closely with a
specific database publisher to properly "map" the structure of the federated
search engine to the structure of the content database (such as HeinOnline),
your patrons may not receive accurate search results. In fact, at this time,
ALL federated search engines, in the case of HeinOnline, could MISS much of
the content found in HeinOnline, leaving your patrons without valuable
content that they would have found by using HeinOnline's own search engine. 

While we have collaborated with several search engine providers to begin to
explore ways to improve the overall results of accurately finding content in
HeinOnline, we ARE NOT endorsing any federated search provider at this time.
We have not found the results from a federated search to be better than
those currently available from HeinOnline's own search engine results.
Therefore, if your library is using a federated search engine, please be
aware that the results of a patron's search with a federated search engine
may miss a significant amount of content currently available in HeinOnline.

If your library has purchased, or plans to purchase, a federated search
engine product, we encourage you to contact the provider and ask them to
contact us so that we may begin to work with them to make HeinOnline
compatible with their product. As we begin to endorse certain providers, we
will notify all HeinOnline subscribers. Please do not rely on the federated
search engine provider to speak on our behalf.

Finally, it has come to our attention that at least one federated search
engine provider has been given access to HeinOnline through a HeinOnline
subscriber. Please be aware that commercial vendors are not considered
authorized users under the terms of the HeinOnline license agreement. Access
to HeinOnline is limited to authorized users only, and is controlled through
IP authentication, a username/password as provided by HeinOnline technical
support, or through your library's proxy server (in which case HeinOnline
technical support should be made aware of your use of a proxy server).

We encourage your questions and feedback, and look forward to working with
the online community to enhance the research experience for everyone. Your
questions or comments may be sent to Daniel P. Rosati at drosati at wshein.com.

Sincerely,
Brian Jablonski

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brian Jablonski
Director, Marketing & Publications
William S. Hein & Co., Inc.
1285 Main Street
Buffalo, New York 14209-1987
800-828-7571 ext. 141
716-883-8100 fax
b_jablonski at wshein.com