Sonny Software

A friend of mine just started using Bookends and asked me if it is possible to tell Bookends to search through a list of libraries/servers if the first one did not get a hit.

Sounds like a nice idea to me. Don’t know if this is feasible though…

(If such a feature would be implemented, it might be a good idea to provide more feedback on the current status of the search process, and to provide a more obvious way of canceling the search than the small notification at the bottom of the window.)

Sounds like it could be a nice addition, but (as always) there can be problems in the details. For example, different sources have different search parameters (you couldn't do a simultaneous PubMed and Google Scholar search, for example). Even within the same "group" (i.e. Z39.50 servers), different sites allow different searches (some allow search in title, some don't, as a simple example). The (lack of) results from such compound searches could be more confusing than helpful.

Jon
Sonny Software