What does the OneSearch box do?
Following in the path of Google, many libraries are offering a single search box to search across all (or most) of their content. The Sawyer Library has had a OneSearch tool since August 2014.
The single search interface intermingles all available content, regardless of the format (books, chapters, articles, videos).
Users may narrow down their results by using the various limiters displayed at the left margin of the screen.
Note:
- The concept of "Peer Reviewed" implies journals.
- The Library Catalog (or OPAC) typically will limit results to books, e-books, or videos.
Pros and Cons of Using OneSearch:
- The OneSearch database is based upon multiple Suffolk-owned or subscribed sources. For any given topic, the user will find some useful sources within the first several results.
- However, the results will refer to a mixture of formats, and source types. The user must either think to sort the results by source type prior to browsing, or must pay careful attention to the individual citations while scanning for content.
- OneSearch can provide an idea of which individual databases contain large numbers of results for a given search, which in turn implies that the topic is well covered in that database.
- However, users who are familiar with the range of databases available to Suffolk, will recognize that not all of the Suffolk databases are included in the OneSearch. Conversely, some content cannot be searched independently from the OneSearch interface.
- Nearly every imaginable search will generate results.
- Result lists can have hundreds of thousands of items. Since the content of multiple sources has been merged, the user is very dependent on the OneSearch relevancy algorithms to select the most useful items from a wide variety of sources, and float them to the top.
- By searching across multiple databases, OneSearch may include results from peripheral content areas which may be quite useful. Example: a public health topic could be discussed in the sociology (or government, economic, or medical) literature.
- However, it is not transparent which individual database contributed the most relevant [sociology] content.
- Despite the extensive numbers of contributing sources, OneSearch lacks the specialized databases, particularly those covering company and industry information.
