[Sigia-l] integrated catalogues?

[Patrick Kennedy]

Anyone care to discuss the relative pros and cons of integrating a bunch 
of databases/catalogues under one search interface, versus separate 
interfaces?

For example, anyone here work on the British Library website? They have 
quite a few catalogues, with separate search interfaces for (and 
different ways of presenting results, different sets of advanced options 
etc etc etc)

Is this a technical limitation? Like, each is in a different database 
and so they haven't got around to integrating them....or is there a user 
experience benefit in doing it this way?

Obviously if you're looking for a particular type of content (manuscript 
as opposed to photo) you might expect to use a different search 
interface, but couldn't a drop-down list with several options handle 
this? Or even simply formatting each result record based on the type of 
material it represents?

Any thoughts?

And yes I am thinking specifically within the context of a library website.

cheers

Pat


-- 
Patrick Kennedy

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