by abe lederman president and cto june 26, 2011
DESCRIPTION
Understanding Differences Between Federated Search and Discovery Services. By Abe Lederman President and CTO June 26, 2011. About Deep Web Technologies. Founded by Abe Lederman in 2002 A co-founder of Verity 20+ years in information business 24 person company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc.
By Abe LedermanPresident and CTO
June 26, 2011
Understanding Differences Between Federated Search and
Discovery Services
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 2
About Deep Web Technologies...
• Founded by Abe Lederman in 2002–A co-founder of Verity–20+ years in information business
• 24 person company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico
• Over $5M in R&D• Pioneered federated search• Developed high profile applications
Santa Fe
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 3
Federated Search allows users to submit a real-time search in parallel to multiple information sources and retrieve aggregated, ranked and de-duplicated results.
What Is Federated Search?
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 4
Public WebSources
One Search, Many Sources
Blogs
eBooks
Enter Your Search… Begin Search
OPACs
Internal Databases Journals
Wikis
SubscriptionSources
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• It is too slow• Connectors break• Brings back too few results from
each source• Brings back too many results• Unable to rank results well (meta-
data differences, lack of info)
Federated Search Has Gotten A Bad Rap
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 6
Federated Search vs. Discovery Services
Federated Search
Discovery Service
Index No Index One unified indexSources No limit Must have
agreementsContent Bias None PossiblyInformation Currency
Real-time return Depends on index update
Preparation Connector Development
Index Development
Speed 2 – 30 seconds 1 – 2 secondsControl Select sources No ability to selectAlerts Yes Some
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Landscape is Not So Clear
• Summon (ProQuest)– Discovery Service
• EDS (EBSCO)– Discovery Service + Federated Search
• WorldCat Local (OCLC)– Discovery Service + Federated Search
• Primo (Ex Libris)– Discovery Service + Federated Search
• Encore Synergy (Innovative Interfaces)– Limited Discovery Service + Federated Search
• Explorit (Deep Web Technologies)– Federated Search
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Content Neutrality
Do you comply with the International Coalitionof Library Consortium (ICOLC) Statement, Principle 3?
“We encourage publishers to allow their content to be made available through numerous vendors appropriate for their subject matter. We also encourage online providers and aggregators to allow their metadata to be included in emerging discovery layer services on a non-exclusive basis.”
--Carl Grant, "Gladiators" to perform sleight-of-hand at Charleston Conference.” Commentary from Carl Grant. October 30, 2010.
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 9
Content Neutrality-Points by Carl Grant
• Is there unbiased ranking of content?• Does competition have access to
content?• Can you control the ranking of
results?• Does the library have control over
their content?
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 10
Lack of Transparency of Discovery Service Vendors
• What is being indexed?–Which Journals/Databases–What period is covered
• Currency of information• Indexing full-text vs. meta-
data only
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 11
Ability to Integrate
• How easy/hard/expensive/time consuming is it to add my catalog and other internal/special sources to index?
• How well do you authenticate/ integrate with link resolvers?
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 12
When Should You Choose Federated Search?
• Access to up-to-date information is important.
• You want control of your sources.• You want to search internal/non-
mainstream sources• Your research is specialized (ex.
medical/legal)• You have a wide range of subscribed
content (ex. EBSCO and ProQuest)
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 13
Getting Federated Search Right
• Display results incrementally• Proactively monitor information sources• Optimized connectors bring back
greater number of high quality results• Do relevance ranking well• Present best results through filters and
clusters
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 14
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc.
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More Reading…
• Federated Search Primer• Quality, Not Quantity Whitepaper• Blog articles
–Discovery Services: Over-Hyped and Under-Performed
–Preparing for ALA Panel and Federated Search Neutrality
–Discovering the need for discovery solutions that also support meta/federated searching (Carl Grant)
© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 20
Thank you!
Questions?Please email me:
Abe Lederman [email protected]
This Powerpoint is located here:www.deepwebtech.com/ala2011.ppt