WebFeat 3 will provide portal to statewide resources for Nevada State Library and Archives

WebFeat selected in head-to-head competition with other federated search solutions

Old Brookville, NY, September 9, 2004—The Nevada State Library and Archives (NSLA) has big goals to help the 2 million citizens of the Silver State have the best online access to library resources. As part of a major Digital Library and Archives project, which seeks to provide easy, comprehensive access by bringing together statewide resources within a single search portal, NSLA has chosen WebFeat, the federated search solution for public, academic, government, and corporate libraries, from a short list of 5 federated search vendors.

“The impetus for the project has always been our users,” said Sara Jones, State Librarian. “Like people across the country, Nevadans want easy web access to richer resources. In the age of the Internet, they expect their libraries to be available online all the time, whether they’re at a computer inside a library or working from home or the office. WebFeat gives us a powerful way to respond to these needs.”

NSLA serves libraries across Nevada, including public, academic, and special libraries such as the Nevada Supreme Court Library. The ultimate goal of the Digital Library and Archives is to serve users at all these libraries by providing total information access—to OPAC catalogs, digital collections, proprietary databases, and unique resources like Nevada census data and the Department of Cultural Affairs web site—all through a single portal. Which is where WebFeat federated search comes in.

“Our vision was simple yet demanding,” added Jones. “We imagined a user accessing the system, searching on ‘Mark Twain’ for example, and getting results that included books he wrote, books about him, journal articles, Twain items from digitized resources, and even documents pertinent to his brother, Nevada’s Territorial Secretary Orion Clemens, who helped persuade Twain to head west.”

To get the project started, NSLA sent out Requests for Proposals to leading federated search vendors. A team representing the different geographies and different library types reviewed the RFPs, contacted other libraries listed as references, and made WebFeat their choice.

“WebFeat’s interface flexibility, its support for hundreds of databases, and its satisfied customers were definitely factors in our decision,” Jones explained. “But the most important thing from my perspective is that when you work with WebFeat, there’s a real partnership. WebFeat works together with you to design and implement a system that meets your unique requirements. Right now, our implementation team and WebFeat are addressing our interface needs, integration with our special digital collections, and with all the independent library automation systems that will come under the NSLA umbrella. With WebFeat, we are bringing all the pieces together.”

Nevada State Library and Archive plans to go live with the WebFeat portal to its online statewide library in the fall of 2004.

About Nevada State Library and Archives
The Nevada State Library and Archives serves government, businesses, libraries, and citizens by providing a full range of information services including reference and research, archival and records management, library planning and development, blind and physically handicapped programs, and development of state information policy to ensure public access to government information in all formats. For more information, visit http://dmla.clan.lib.nv.us/docs/nsla.

About WebFeat
WebFeat (US patent #6,807,539) is the developer of the WebFeat Prism, used by over 1,500 leading public, academic, government and Global 1000 libraries and information centers—including over half of the top 20 largest U.S. public libraries and one out of every 10 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) institutions.

WebFeat’s latest release, WebFeat 3, offers a suite of next-generation metasearch tools, the SMART™ COUNTER-compliant usage tracker, and MyWebFeat™ personalized metasearch system. Originally founded in 1992 as an information technology consultancy, WebFeat has earned industry recognition from leading organizations such as the Gartner Group and Library Journal. Learn more about WebFeat at www.webfeat.org.