The Pittsburgh HSLS is using a federated search engine by Vivisimo as a method to access more than 300 health and biomedical ebooks. http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=14161

As many medical librarians know, electronic books come from a wide variety of vendors. In order to find information the patron must do multiple searches in each vendor's bundle of ebooks, which could be a time consuming process.

The process can be even more information when the patron is looking for an answer to a specific question. According to Deb Silverman, associate director for Resource Management for the HSLS, "The types of digital books that we buy are overwhelmingly clinical, clinical support materials, etc. They're not research tools; they're answer tools. Nobody actually reads these things. They just go in, find their info, and get out."

Silverman had been keeping an eye on federated searching as possible solution, but until recently she felt that federated search engines did a poor job of managing really large search results and handing medical language.

"HSLS chose Vivisimo Velocity in large part because of its ability to delineate between the various meanings of search terms through the clusters, or headings, generated by this product. 'It's really easy on a word that's pretty nebulous to know exactly where you want to go next while also getting a sense of the volume of material available on a particular subject,' says Silverman. 'The clustering resolves these linguistic conflicts very well."

Vivisimo Velocity package which uses two components to effectively manages large search results across multiple vendors. Vivisimo's Clustering Engine organizes search results into a series of folders, "enabling users to start with simple search queries and then drill down through these clusters to obtain the best information available." Vivisimo's Content Integrator, allows searches to be performed across multiple content providers. Vivisimo Velocity packages these two technologies into one product.

HSLS began running a prototype for internal testing in January 2005 and went live a couple of months later. According to HSLS, Vivisimo Velocity has been very successful.