federated search: the good and the bad abe lederman, president and cto deep web technologies, inc....
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Federated Search: The Good and the Bad
Abe Lederman, President and CTO Deep Web Technologies, Inc.
APLA 2008 - May 9, 2008
Who We Are…Founded in 2002
Headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico
20 Employees
Over $2 million in R&D funding
DWT is focused on providing state-of-the-art federated search products and solutions which search, retrieve, aggregate and
analyze content from web-based databases.
Abe Lederman-Background
Earned B.S. and M.S. Computer Science degrees, MIT
Began work in information retrieval in 1988• Co-founded Verity
Developed some of the first web-based applications that searched text-based content, 1994
Pioneered “Deep Web” searching in 1999• Founded Deep Web Technologies, 2002
Some of Deep Web’s Customers Department of Defense
DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information
Intel Corporate Library
National Agricultural Library
Scitopia.org
Stanford University
What is Federated Search?
Federated Search is an application or service that
allows a user to submit a search in parallel to multiple,
distributed information sources and retrieve aggregated, ranked
and de-duped results.
In Other Words…One Search, Many Sources
LibraryCatalogs
Blogs & Wikis
SubscriptionSources
Public Web Sources
E-Books
News
Begin Search
Benefits of Federated Search One-stop access to multiple information
sources• Users don’t need to know where/how to search
• Saves researcher time and money
• Improves utilization of information sources
Consolidated, ranked and de-duped results• Important results are not missed
Information Discovery
Employees oftenasked, “Why can’tthe Intel Librarysite work likeGoogle or Yahoo?”
Federated SearchFederated Searchat the Intel Libraryat the Intel Library
Geothermal Heating
Why Aren’t all Federated Search Engines Equal?
1. Quality of search results
2. User Interface
3. Results Delivery
4. Administrative Console
Quality of Search Results
Thorough connector development
Boolean and Fielded Searching
Number of results retrieved from each source
Relevance Ranking of retrieved data
User Interface
“Intuitive” navigation Rich feature set
Display of results incrementally
Integration with library’s website (supports multiple search pages)
Powerful web 2.0 interface
Results Delivery Aggregated, ranked results
Clustering/grouping of results
Analysis tools such as filters and sorts
Results Export to RSS, Email, Citation manager
Alerts
Administrative Console Enable/disable connectors
Create search boxes and search pages easily
Metrics
Federated search engines have varying strengths and weaknesses. Select the federated search that is
best for your organization.
Bottom Line
Recommendations
for selecting the “best” federated search
engine for your library.
“Basically, anything that results in a more enjoyable search experience, will lead users to spend more time with a particular federated search product and thus derive value from those highly relevant results, assuming they are easy to find. This is where a pleasant and uncluttered layout, intuitive navigation, and a good amount of Ajax to minimize page refreshes combine with highly relevant search results to create the perfect user experience.
From The Federated Search Blogwww.federatedsearchblog.comSponsored by
What Is Important(and what’s not)
Information Discovery
Analysis
Features Time-Saving
Full-Text Access Quality of ResultsIntuitive Interface
Elegant Presentation
RankingInternal Sources
Premium Content Sources
User Satisfaction
Simplify Access
Standards
Clusters – Facets – Visualizations
Metadata
Alerts
Real-Time Search Cost
Administrative Interface
Bringing Federated Search to your Library
Clearly Define Your Organization’s Requirements
Create Evaluation Criteria
Evaluate Vendors
Test-Test-Test
Narrowing Down Your Vendor Choices
Select Vendors to Evaluate
Send Evaluations
Demo Products
Conduct Pilots
Deploy Solution
Vendors
Clearly Define Your Organization’s Requirements
Compile your list of sources to federate• Determine sources to search from each
search page Licensed Product vs. Managed Solution Budget Staff Resources Timelines Determine features important to users
Compile a list of requirements and features a vendor must provide.
Add additional features you would like to have.
Create a vendor checklist.Evaluate responses.
Create Evaluation Criteria
Sample Vendor Checklist:Company Viability
Question VendorResponse
Explain the history of your company
Who currently uses your product?
Please provide three (3) references we may contact.
Sample Vendor Checklist:Architecture and Integration
Question Vendor Response
Is your product compatible with a URL resolver? Proxies?
Can we incorporate an API interface for integrating with internal sources (web services)?
Is your product compatible with existing systems such as an ILS?
What browsers is your product compatible with? (IE6, IE7, Firefox, Safari)
Sample Vendor Checklist:Connectors
Question Vendor Response
What protocols are supported? (HTTP/HTML, Z39.50, XML, SRU/SRW)
Will you support custom connector development?
What is the size of your connector catalog?
How easy is it to add new connectors? Can we do it, or do we need to go through you?
Sample Vendor Checklist:Results Display
Question Vendor Response
Does your product support relevance ranking?
Can your product sort by an element of a result (author, relevance, date, title, source)?
Does your product support highlighting of search terms within a results set?
Does your product de-dupe results? Are the de-duping criteria adjustable?
Vendor Evaluation Demonstrations and Pilots
• Is a pilot necessary?
• How long of a pilot?
• Should we do multiple pilots?
• Conduct focus groups
• Fulfillment of requirements
and features
Do you offer a free pilot evaluation of your software?
Would your pilot be hosted by you, or installed locally?
How long do your pilot evaluations usually last?
What would we need to provide you for a pilot evaluation?
Remember: Federated Search is a long-term commitment to a vendor.
Test-Test-TestScripting your tests
• Test each engine against the same criteria (same queries, same sources)
Break-dancing• How sturdy is the engine?
Vendor Response • How quickly (or slowly) does the vendor
respond to your needs?
The Future of Federated Search
Multi-lingual searching Personal libraries Automated source selection Integration with social networking tools
Deep Web’s Search Gallery
Resources The Federated Search Blog
• www.federatedsearchblog.com
Sample Vendor Checklist• Email me: [email protected]
Federated Search: Solution or
Setback for Online Library Services Edited by Christopher Cox
Thank You!