The Detailed Need Assessment And Development Of Federated Search Engine Application On Academic Research Databases Of Ethiopian Universities To Create Research Information Sharing Environment

Abstract

Federated search (federated information retrieval or distributed information retrieval) is a technique for searching multiple text collections simultaneously. Queries are submitted to a subset of collections that are most likely to return relevant answers. The results returned by selected collections are integrated and merged into a single list. This research project aimed to identify the detailed need of federated search application and developing application of federated search tool on academic research in order to bridge databases in Ethiopian universities on research information sharing environment. A descriptive cross sectional study design was used in this study. And data were gathered from three Ethiopian universities using questionnaire method of data collection. Stratified and purposive sampling techniques and Quantitative data analysis method was used for this study. The study finding confirmed that there is a high need of federated search engine application and also there is a problem of research information sharing between Ethiopian universities. Additionally the finding indicated that federated search engine application will widely use if it is developed and implemented on Ethiopian universities. Therefore in order to solve this need, this research project also delivers federated search engine application. Solr open source search engine software is used for the federated search engine application development.