Federated Search

Federated search blog turns 7 (months)

Sol — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:27:44 +0000

I launched this blog seven months and two days ago with this post. I’m delighted with the readership, the comments, and the participation and there are some great things in store for the rest of 2008 and beyond.

The article base is strong and growing. It currently includes:

21 basics articles
42 viewpoint articles
a number of reviews, technology and industry news articles
a few fun articles

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Free federated search: membership has its benefits

Sol — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:44:19 +0000

Do you remember the days when, if you opened a savings account at your local bank, they gave you a toaster? (Or, as the joke went during the painful times the savings and loan industry endured — “Buy a toaster, get a free savings and loan!”) Well, in today’s mail I got a much more enticing offer (since I don’t eat toast very often) - support your Alma Mater (Stanford University - I attended for several years but left for personal reasons and did not receive a degree) and get “Free online access to thousands of newspapers, magazines, professional and scientific journals, and trade publications.” While I need to disclose that Stanford has announced that it is partnering with this blog’s sponsor Deep Web Technologies to deploy a federated search solution for the Stanford University Libraries, this article has nothing to do with this partnership.

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Federated search roadmap: Part II - Identifying benefits

Sol — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:06:14 +0000

This article is the second in a series intended to help those exploring federated search to understand the steps to procuring a federated search product or service Part I explored the business case, i.e. the compelling reasons for pursuing federated search. While the exploration of the issues in Part I may have included discussion of benefits, the discussion was a high-level one. Part II drops to a deeper level of detail. Part III will consider features in the context of requirements and benefits.

Note that benefits are not features. While I am not a sales or marketing professional, my experience in working with customers is that they desire benefits and that they only desire the features that increase their benefits. Too many features can actually make an application undesirable if, for example, ease of use is an important benefit and the weight of all those features negates that benefit.

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Searchin’

Sol — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:56:45 +0000

[ Editor’s disclaimer: I am paid by both Deep Web Technologies and by the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) for various projects. ]

On Wednesday, Deep Web Technologies was named Small Business Innovation Research small business of the year by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). (There’s a press release regarding the award here.) In order to receive the prestigious award, Deep Web had to provide a song and slide show; a small snippet of the song plus the slide show was played at the ceremony.

Can you guess what song Deep Web chose?

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Review: Build it (and Customize and Market It) and They Will Come

Sol — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:51:45 +0000

[ Editor’s note: This review of one of the chapters from Christopher Cox’s collection of federated search articles is by Susan Fingerman. Susan is on the staff of the R.E. Gibson Library, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel, MD.

Susan, like other reviewers, selected three articles to read and comment on. Susan picked the theme of user expectations for all three of her articles. Below is her first review which tells of how one library marketed its newly acquired federated search solution to its constituents plus lessons learned.

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Diagnosing federated search source problems: it’s harder than you think

Sol — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:34:36 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about ten unrealistic expectations that some people have about federated search. A few days ago The Krafty Librarian published a blog article expressing frustrations over PubMed having been down for a number of hours with no notification from PubMed. In my book, this makes for unrealistic expectation number 11:

11. If a source ever goes down, the content owner should immediately and widely broadcast this information.

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ALA conference approaching

Sol — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:05:59 +0000

The ALA 2008 Annual Conference is fast approaching. This year it’ll be in Anaheim. The conference starts next Thursday (June 26th) and goes through July 2nd. Like in the very recent SLA 2008 Conference, I couldn’t find presentations that would be of particular interest to the federated search community. Federated search vendors, though, are better represented in the exhibitor booths:

Auto-Graphics, Inc. (Booth #1366)
CARE Affiliates (Booth #466)
Ex Libris (Booth #1694)
Serials Solutions (Booth #1652)
TDNet (Booth #1333)
U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Scientific & Technical Information (OSTI) (Booth #2471)

Note that Deep Web Technologies will be co-exhibiting with OSTI.

Update 6/23/08: Please see Peter Noerr’s comment on this blog post for vendors I missed.

Noted industry experts to judge federated search writing contest

Sol — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:04:45 +0000

As announced in Deep Web Technologies’ recent press release, six noted federated search experts will be serving as judges for the federated search writing contest. Predict the future of federated search and win $100, $250, or $500 in cash.

If you publish a blog related to federated search, information science, or to library science I’d very much appreciate a mention of our contest.

Entries are due August 1st.

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I’m away from my desk right now …

Sol — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:26:36 +0000

I’m on travel for the next few days. (I’ve been in Seoul, Korea, at the signing of the WorldWideScience Alliance Formation Ceremony and now I’m off for some personal travel in the Korean countryside.) I’ll be away from the Internet, and not posting again until Wednesday. When I return I’ll write more about the “predict the future of federated search contest” - we have six notable judges for the contest, I’ll be publishing more reviews of essays from Christopher Cox’s book, I’ll continue with the federated search roadmap series, and I’ve got some other interesting items to write about.

Have a great weekend. I’ll “see” you all Wednesday.

Abe Lederman featured in “Search Wizards Speak”

Sol — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:20:27 +0000

Search pundit Stephen Arnold started a series in February, Search Wizards Speak, in which he interviews people who, in Arnold’s words, “have made significant contributions to information retrieval.” Eighteen people, thus far, have made Arnold’s list. Abe Lederman is one of them. Abe is founder of Deep Web Technologies; his company sponsors this blog.

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