I've noticed that reference and instructional librarians (at least in published literature) tend to use the term "federated search" more often than others. And by that they mean a broadcast search, not what Ray and many others mean by that term. Library technology folk tend to use the other terms more often. --Dave ================== David Walker Library Web Services Manager California State University http://xerxes.calstate.edu ________________________________________ From: Code for Libraries [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress [[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 8:28 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon From: "Thomas Dowling" <[log in to unmask]> > You can define differences between meta-, federated, and broadcast search, > but > every discussion on the topic will be punctuated by people asking, "Wait, > what's the difference again?" Leaving aside metasearch and broadcast search (terms invented more recently) it is a shame if "federated" has really lost its distinction from"distributed". Historically, a federated database is one that integrates multiple (autonomous) databases so it is in effect a virtual distributed database, though a single database. I don't think that's a hard concept and I don't think it is a trivial distinction. --Ray