To Google or Not to Google

The goal of metasearch systems is to facilitate access for researchers—both novice and expert users—to the ever-growing number of scholarly electronic resources. Researchers today are typically Web-savvy and have high expectations regarding ease of access to information for their research needs. Facing the variety and complexity of the interfaces provided by information providers, researchers often prefer to use Google or other Web search engines. Libraries need to address the expectations of today’s users, encouraging them to take full advantage of the scholarly information resources in which libraries invest so heavily. From a user’s point of view, metasearching has numerous benefits over other methods of conducting research. Metasearch workflows can be tailored to different types of users and can provide two-fold access to information—via the metasearch interface and via the native interface of the specific information provider. The presentation of results is a major issue in searching and retrieval. According to Roy Tennant, of the California Digital Library, “the size of a result set isn’t as important as how it is presented”—what he calls the “Google lesson.” Metasearch systems employ a variety of methods to display results to end users. Case studies on the effects of metasearch systems that were introduced into academic environments have yielded valuable information about the change in patterns of electronic resource usage on campus. The paper concludes with some ideas on future directions that metasearch systems might take.