Synonyms
Federated search
Definition
Searching digital libraries refers to searching and retrieving information from remote databases of digitized or digital objects. These databases may hold either the metadata for an object of interest (e.g., author and title), or a complete object such as a book or a video.
Historical Background
The initial efforts to standardize and facilitate searching of digital libraries date back to the 1970s, when the development of the Z39.50 protocol started. The Z39.50 protocol is an ANSI standard and defines how to search and retrieve items from a remote database catalog. The Z39.50 protocol was widely deployed within library environments, allowing users to perform searches to remote libraries.
With the advent of the Web, libraries started digitizing and making contents available on the Web, and the Z39.50 protocol started losing its importance. Many libraries made their content “searchable” through standard Web forms, allowing users to search and retrieve...
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Ipeirotis, P.G. (2018). Searching Digital Libraries. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_327
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