Federated search Searching information across the AstraZeneca organisation

Abstract

Finding information that is stored among many different databases has become a serious problem because of the increasing number of searchable databases on local area networks and on the Internet. Many large organisations in change, suffer from this problem due to a large number of databases and many different uncooperative search tools. By using federated search a single search interface provides access to all searchable text databases in one moment. The question for the problem is: in what ways can federated search improve searching and help satisfy employees’ information needs? A theoretical investigating of the resent research issues for federated search have been made in addition to a study of the search habits among employees’ within AstraZeneca R&D organisation. The empirical study was made by semi-structured interviews. The discovered search problems are discussed in relation to the latest research issues for federated search. Some of the facilities sought for by the employees’ where a user-friendly search interface, a structured result list in response to a search-query and a possibility to easily find interesting documents within the result list. All these facilities are solved with federated search.