Friday 15 October 2010

Federated search engine for US government documents

Speaking of the Government Printing Office, it has recently introduced Metalib, a library portal that provides an easy interface to search simultaneously through a variety of electronic resources, such as catalogs, reference databases, digital repositories or subject-based Web gateways. This federated search engine ("federated" means it searches multiple databases) searches across U.S. Federal government databases, retrieving reports, articles, and citations while providing direct links to selected resources available online. When you find the information you need, MetaLib provides tools to save it for future reference in your E-shelf, save it to disk or send it by email. You can search multiple databases in parallel using the Basic, Advanced or Expert interface. You can also search individual databases using theA-Z Resource List , which enables you to locate specific databases from the wide range of databases available. The A-Z Resource List also lets you create your own sets of databases for searching at your convenience. In addition you can link to the native interface of a database and use that for searching.

hat tip: Joe Hodnicki

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