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This study evaluated the usability of a metasearch, or federated search, interface used by the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions.The authors conducted usability testing of the metasearch system to understand student perceptions of metasearch's usefulness and to learn if students could effectively complete research tasks using metasearch. Students determined when they had successfully completed the task.The study found that students perceived metasearch to be a useful tool but that they had low rates of success in completing some tasks. Technical limitations and interface design problems contributed to their difficulties. Students expected to be able to construct searches as they do in Internet search engines and, for example, expected results lists to have relevancy ranking and more descriptive information.s libraries offer their users expanding collections of electronic resources, including databases, online journals, and e-books, metasearch systems have become increasingly appealing. Also sometimes referred to as federated search, metasearch promises users the ability to search across multiple databases at the same time, reducing the burden of learning many different search interfaces and, thereby, streamlining research.The 16 libraries in the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions (USMAI) share an implementation of Ex Libris' MetaLib metasearch system. At the time of the study, USMAI had implemented MetaLib version 3.12. The interface, named Research Port, provides two differently configured metasearch options: Quick Search and Cross Search. Quick Search allows users to search a small set of databases preselected by librarians. Cross Search allows users to select a subject category and subcategory and then databases within that subcategory to include in the search. Both search screens present one search box, although each has an "Advanced" tab users can select to do fielded searching on a limited set of fields.Because it aggregates search results from multiple sources, metasearch can take longer to present results than a single database or an Internet search engine. Technical limitations influence the functionality of metasearch, so libraries should take advantage of opportunities to customize these interfaces to make them as usable as possible.

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