University of Pittsburgh Upgrades Custom Branded WebFeat System

Marketing Campaign Helps Make Zoom! Search Tool a Success

Old Brookville, NY, July 20, 2005 — In June, the University of Pittsburgh University Library System upgraded its WebFeat federated search system to include the latest WebFeat 3 features and benefits. "Our first generation WebFeat system gave our users unprecedented ease of access to the myriad electronic resources we offer," commented Jeff Wisniewski, Web Services Librarian. "But, Webfeat 3 takes that one step further by giving our users powerful tools to manage their results, including the ability to merge and de-dupe results, and easier ways to mark, print, and export citations."

The University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh is the 26th-largest academic research library in North America and the 16th-largest among the prestigious public libraries of the Association of American Universities. The library makes more than 200 online databases and electronic resources available to tens of thousands of users. The library originally launched WebFeat in 2004 to address the problem that most of its users were finding it overwhelming to navigate and search the wealth of electronic resources the library was offering.

"We are thrilled with the WebFeat solution,” commented Amy Knapp, Assistant Director, University Library System. “The library recognized the benefits of Google-like searching--ease of use, always present access, and fast results--but we needed to find a scholarly solution. Given the vast amount of unique databases offered by Pitt libraries, we didn't think we would ever find one tool that would be compatible with all of our databases, be able to handle simultaneous searching of so many resources and return quality results with such a fast response time. WebFeat has far exceeded our expectations of what a search system could be."

Since it first went live in August 2004, the University Library System's WebFeat tool was christened Zoom! The University contracted the University's marketing department to help it come up with the Zoom! branding. University librarians wanted to name the system in a way that captured the essence of what federated searching can do for users. The librarians thought that the slogan “Zoom!…any easier and it wouldn’t be research” said it all. WebFeat provides a custom user interface for the University Library System's search tool with the Zoom! branding seamlessly embedded within the Library's web pages. With its latest system upgrades, the University has continued to
invest in its Zoom! marketing campaign, which includes an array of promo materials like postcards, clingform stickers, table-top signs for campus locations and mousepads. The quality of the search experience combined with the University's quality resources and comprehensive marketing efforts have made Zoom! a tremendous success.

The University Library System provides various types of search interfaces to accomodate the needs of its diverse researchers. Zoom! interfaces provide different options for both simple and advanced searches. Knapp remarked, “Not only is WebFeat a tremendous help to novice users, but it enables experienced users to easily identify those databases best suited for their scholarly needs. WebFeat enables all of our researchers to know at a glance where to focus their time and efforts. Zoom! not only improves access to our more popular databases, but it has helped the library promote underutilized University resources that were previously hard to find or hard to get to."

To learn more about the University of Pittsburgh's Zoom! search system, read our case study.

About WebFeat
WebFeat (US patent #6,807,539) is the developer of the WEBFEAT PRISM™, used by over 2,500 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 federated search tools, PRISM, the SMART™ COUNTER-compliant usage tracker, and MyWebFeat™ personalized federated search system. Originally founded in 1992 as an information technology consultancy, WebFeat has earned industry recognition from leading organizations such as Library Journal and the Gartner Group. Learn more about WebFeat at http://www.webfeat.org.