Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library chooses WebFeat for unified searching of 55 databases and library catalog

Leading federated search engine provides single, intuitive point of entry to all resources, tracks database usage

Old Brookville, N.Y., January 20, 2004 - Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library, with 8 branches serving 172,000 residents of Vanderburgh County, Indiana, has implemented WebFeat Prism to provide federated searching of 55 free, subscription-based, and specialized information databases, in addition to the library's central catalog. With WebFeat, users can simultaneously search all of the library's main resources through a single easy-to-use web interface.

"Our goal in implementing WebFeat Prism was to provide our users with a simpler way to search our resources," said Mike Abaray, Associate Director for Support Services at Evansville Vanderburgh. "Before, they'd have to click through one database after another, entering the same information again and again. That could sometimes mean 20 to 30 individual searches. Now, they can enter a search term and access all 55 databases and the catalog with one click."

WebFeat works closely with each customer-library to provide exactly the service the library's users require. "Once we decided on the look and feel of our interface and specified our search criteria -basic search by title, author, or keyword, Boolean operators, single- or multi-database- WebFeat quickly had us up and running, faster than we expected," added Abaray.

Evansville Vanderburgh patrons can use WebFeat to search 55 databases and the catalog globally, or get more focused results from 9 specific categories such as Articles and News, Business, or Health and Science. Searchable resources include three Local Information databases of news and photographic records dating back to the turn of the 20th Century. These preserve and present information relevant to the history of Evansville, Vanderburgh County, and Indiana.

Once WebFeat has been in use long enough to gather meaningful statistics, Evansville Vanderburgh will use WebFeat Usage Tracker (WUT) to measure federated search and database usage. Tracking this data through WebFeat will help the library determine which resources provide the best return on investment.

WebFeat Prism, an application service hosted by WebFeat, provides all the benefits of federated search -fast, unified web-based searching of multiple resources- but offloads the burden of maintaining up-to-date connectivity to the thousands of resources that libraries depend on.

Said Abaray, "We went live with WebFeat Prism just before Thanksgiving, and it looks like it's exactly what we needed. I am impressed with the simplicity of the solution, the ASP business model, and the professionalism of everyone at WebFeat. They deliver on the promise of providing powerful federated searching without the upkeep required with locally installed software products."

About WebFeat
WebFeat (US patent #6,807,539) is the developer of the WebFeat Prism, used by over 1,500 leading public, academic, government and Global 1000 libraries and information centers—including over half of the top 20 largest U.S. public libraries and one out of every 10 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) institutions.

WebFeat’s latest release, WebFeat 3, offers a suite of next-generation metasearch tools, the SMART™ COUNTER-compliant usage tracker, and MyWebFeat™ personalized metasearch system. Originally founded in 1992 as an information technology consultancy, WebFeat has earned industry recognition from leading organizations such as the Gartner Group and Library Journal. Learn more about WebFeat at www.webfeat.org.