Recently while surfing the net I came across Bento Box Searching in libraries. It was quite intriguing to know this style of searching which is till now being used by google. 

What is a Bento box? 

Bento is traditional Japanese cuisine which holds rice, fish or meat, with pickled or cooked vegetables, usually in a box-shaped container.

Digital libraries are now adopting bento box search  in order to make information more accessible.  A bento box search is a search tool which enables the users to search with a single, simple search box. Once the query is typed in the search box, the results shows up in a compartmentalized display called bento box where results are characterized by format type like articles, websites, images and related resources. For e.g some one searching on French revolution won't just get results for books but also links to related articles, images of revolution etc. So all the information related to revolution in different format will be displayed to the end users. 

Some of the libraries who have adopted bento searching are 

Columbia University  

Cornell University  

Dartmouth College  

North Carolina State University 

Princeton University 

Stanford University 

University of Michigan 

University of Virginia