Gale's "Power Search" and WebFeat

Once again, I am posting here a follow-up on integrated federated searching, as posted on our Black Gold Blog.

I wrote in early July about the federated search service, WebFeat. I'd like to mention Gale's search options as well. Gale has a free widget that can be added to a website to search all the Gale Databases to which a library subscribes. For an additional fee Gale will include the library's catalog and other subscription databases. I spoke with a representative from Gale/Cengage Learning this week and was referred to several websites to view the search function in place. For example, one can visit Redwood City Public Library and look at the lower left for the "PowerSearch" box. Another is San Leandro Public Library where "PowerSearch" is placed on the right side of the page.

I wanted to learn more about the differences between WebFeat and Gale's "PowerSearch," in particular, pricing and features. I wrote to the Gale representative who supplied me with the following summary:

The price is not based on the number of branches a library has but the population served and the number of non-Gale electronic resources you choose to include. It is slightly higher than the $1,200 I estimated as I had forgotten that your population served is over 200,000.
So, for San Luis Obispo City County Library, the cost would be:
$2,995 per year to include 1 -10 resources, including your catalog
$5,995 per year to include 11-25 resources, including your catalog
By resources, I mean individual sources. For instance, each of the newspapers you get from NewsBank is considered one resource. So the number of resources is not at the vendor level (ie. NewsBank) but at the individual source level that you choose to include (ie. Ventura County Star, San Luis Obispo Tribune, etc).

I called the sales director at WebFeat and inquired about their product and was quoted the following pricing: $7,950 annually per library system (jurisdiction) for up to 50 resources. The SMART Usage Tracker for reports of key metrics is an additional $2,000.
The WebFeat "about us" web page states the following:

In February 2008, WebFeat was acquired by ProQuest. As a result of this strategic alignment, the strengths of WebFeat’s and Serials Solutions’ federated search platforms will be combined to create a single, market-leading solution. The new platform will debut in early 2009, providing libraries with more power and efficiency in accessing their data pools.

Whether Black Gold stays with our current automated system or chooses another, a federated search might be something to consider to increase popularity of our catalog and databases, and factor into the cost of automation. I am posting this for general information purposes to support those exploring various options for our consortium.