Digital Commons Network^™

Federated Searching: Do Undergraduates Prefer It And Does It Add Value?, C. Jeffrey Belliston, Jared L. Howland, Brian C. Roberts

Faculty Publications

Randomly selected undergraduates at Brigham Young University, Brigham Young University Idaho and Brigham Young University Hawaii, all private universities sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, participated in a study of federated searching. This paper reports the study results including differences in time spent between searching databases in federated and non-federated fashion, satisfaction with citations gathered using each method, preference between methods, and quality of citations retrieved by each method judged by two different rubrics. Undergraduates rated their satisfaction with the citations gathered by federated searching 6.5% higher than their satisfaction using non-federated search methods. Additionally, 70% …