Scholarly search

Dartmouth College has deployed a new search engine on its multifaceted Web site, dartmouth.edu. With an increase in the number of documents on its site over the past two years, the college saw the need for a more powerful search solution.

After conducting a series of tests, the Dartmouth computing services committee--comprised of representatives from system services, the library, several professional schools and the administration--chose the Verity Ultraseek enterprise search engine.

The new system ensures that all Dartmouth-related Web content that should be indexed can be indexed. The engine expands index capacity from 100,000 to 1 million documents, permitting more accurate and relevant search results, according to a recent press release from Verity. Also a wider range of document formats can be indexed quickly, including HTML, XML, text, RTF, PDF, Microsoft Office and more.

Says Brian Hughes, Dartmouth's associate director of Web operations in computing technical services, "The product offers more flexibility, more fine-tuning , a deeper feature set and better customer support."

The new search engine has also resulted in increased search speed and a reduction in frustration and time that users spend finding information on the site, Verity says.