What Happened to 360 Search?
360 Search has been replaced by the new search engine, SearchWiSE. Both are designed to search multiple resources and return results in one interface. Because 360 Search works by searching outside databases and pulling the information in, it was sometimes slow and a little clunky. SearchWiSE is basically the next generation of searching – all of the information, from books to title level indexing of online journals, is housed and searched in one place. So now when you conduct a search, you will uncover much of what is unique to FAU Libraries, and your results will be returned quickly in one intuitive interface.
What is SearchWiSE?
SearchWise uses a single search box — that helps you discover information in all formats from the Florida Atlantic University Libraries’ collections — including print and electronic books, journals and newspapers, videos, CDs, and digitized collections. All of these formats are integrated into a single results list. You see what you want, click through to the full text if available or, in the case of physical materials, find its location in the library.
To put it simply, SearchWiSE does for libraries what Google does for the Web. SearchWise is powered by the Summon™ service which works by pre-indexing content, allowing instant and true relevancy-ranked results.
Let us know what you think of SearchWiSE by email, commenting below, or on the Libraries’ Facebook page.
Wow. What a useless piece of junk. Bang-up job FAU library. You have managed to take a somewhat useful resource that searched a infinite world of information and turn it into a circus monkey. Bang-up job!
Daniel:
We are very sorry to hear of your disappointment with SearchWiSE. This new service provides access to a massive index of more than 500 million records from 6200 content providers. It is unique in that it brings the user back to content that is available in the FAU Libraries collections. Content types include: library catalog records, e-journal articles, databases, newspaper articles, e-books, dissertations, institutional repositories, conference proceedings, grey literature, cited references, reports, digital collections, and more. The facets feature (Refine your search) allows users to simply narrow or broaden their search. To view more detail on the service see http://www.serialssolutions.com/summon/. If you have any more questions about SearchWiSE or any other library resource, please feel free to contact us at 561-297-3785 or lyref@fau.edu.
I have to agree that SearchWise seems like a worse search engine than 360, at least in terms of humanities or literary studies research. The results tend to be less focused and relevant, even when using the advanced search in SearchWise and narrowing down to academic sources. I’ve decided to just shift to searching individual subject databases rather than SearchWise in order to ensure relevant results and I’m going to make the same recommendation when assigning research projects to my students.
I personally like SearchWise a lot better than 360 search. I had completely given up on 360 search due to the lack focus in the results generated. SearchWise has given me much more relevant results and I find the layout of the SearchWise results much more organized and easy on the eyes.
Here is a question though…
Is it possible for each student to personalize their search experience? For example, I would like to be able to search in specific databases such as JStor, Springer-Link and Proquest . Is it possible for me to make this selection once and for all, under a profile setting, so that each time I come in, those are automatically selected? The same could be said about selecting a few e-journals and always being able to search within those. This would be a great time saver.
SearchWise is an official headache. 360 Search engine was a little chaotic, but I didn’t have to search for a journal article like I do with SearchWise. Can FAU subscribe to both?
After a few hours using the service I have come to appreciate it. It is, in my opinion, more user-friendly.
It would not be practical to subscribe to both products, as the technology of SearchWiSE (product name, Summon) was developed by the same company as a major advancement over the “federated searching” capabilities of 360 Search. This is a fairly new product, and there will be many enhancements and improvements to come.
Please keep in mind that SearchWiSE can be a good place to start when researching a general topic, or when looking for multiple formats (books and articles) in one place. But, when looking for articles in a specific subject area, I strongly recommend that you use a subject specific database or index, see Databases by Subject or consult a Research Guide (LibGuide). Or, try a general or multidisciplinary database.
Hi Ira:
Great comments. Limiting to selected databases was definitely an advantage of 360 search, and I believe librarians from other universities have suggested a similar enhancement. I did pass your comments on, but feel free to submit your comments to the Feedback link at the top right of the results page, and both the library and the product’s company will receive your input.
I played around a little bit, and found something cool that may or may not help. From the advanced search page, I submitted 2 journal titles in the publication field (library journal OR publisher weekly), generated the search and subscribed to the Search RSS feed. This way I would get an update of anything new in these journals, or I could add a search term. Not exactly what you’re looking for, but let’s wait and see what enhancements are down the road. Also, if you haven’t already, explore the personalization options in the databases that you use now. Note that Springer-Link will be coming out with a new interface, and so will Proquest (eventually).
You can’t export your search findings as an html paged. I used to LOVE this about 360. I could do my search, save my results to the desktop, and then just link back up to the articles when I wanted to read them, instead of having to search all over again.
Hi Steve:
You can do this in SearchWiSE as well. When you hover (or mouse over) the article you would like to save, 2 icons will appear to the right of the title, select the folder icon to save the citation. Once you are ready to export or save your findings, click on the “saved items” link at the bottom right. This menu will give you the option to export into refworks or save as text (BibTex). Once you save your citations, you can open with Word or in Notepad.
Also, if you haven’t yet checked the citation tool, Refworks, I would recommend that you use this to help organize and save your findings. Find more information on the Libraries’ Citations guide. For any more help, please feel free to contact me jstrudw1@fau.edu or the Reference Department.
I have to agree with others who have weighed in on SearchWise — without the function of being able to limit search to specific area or types of databases, the new search engine is extremely cumbersome.
I guess for the time being I’ll go to each individual db for arts and humanities. Hope you can get this enhancement in.
SearchWise is useless for obtaining any information on ancient languages which is my main area of interest. 360 was not the greatest, but it retrieved far more than SearchDumb. I will not be referring any patrons to this service, but rather Google Scholar which is far more superior for a starting point.
Hi William:
Yes, it was nice that you could choose the databases you wanted to search in 360. If you are looking for ancient languages, you may want to search directly in a subject database or index. If you were using the Language & Linguistics category of 360, the databases that were included are MLA, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts and Humanities Index. When referring patrons to Google Scholar, please make sure to let them know that they can choose FAU as their institution under Scholar Preferences. If you have any other questions or concerns please feel free to contact me directly at jstrudw1@fau.edu, or refer to the SearchWiSE page for a user’s guide and list of FAQs. Thanks for your comments.
I cannot figure out an easy way to search for authors in the new SearchWISE but I see you posted a reference page so I will try that. So far it is not efficient. If you can describe an author search simply, I would be grateful.
Hi Mary:
The best way to find an author in SearchWiSE is to use the Advanced Search option. From the library’s home page, you can just click Search to get into SearchWiSE. From there click on “Advanced Search” (next to the Search Library button).
You can now put the author’s name in the field “Written/Created by” and limit to any format you want.
If you know you are looking for a book, you may want to search directly in the library catalog, or if you want to search for articles by an author, you may want use a subject database, see http://www.fau.edu/library/ecollect/searchwise_faq.php#ShouldIuseSearchwise.
Please feel free to contact me (jstrudw1@fau.edu) if you still haven’t found what you are looking for. You can also contact our Reference librarians for further assistance, http://www.library.fau.edu/depts/ref/askpol.htm.
Congratulations on deploying summon / searchwise! I’m sure once your patrons adjust they’ll be happy with your efforts.