Archive for July, 2008

30
Jul

Library open source solution vendor, LibLime, announced yesterday that they and CARE Affiliates

“have entered into a definitive agreement to sell select assets of CARE Affiliates to LibLime. The sale will include select products, related services and domain names along with associated service contracts. Final closing is scheduled for August 2008.”

Like CARE Affiliates, LibLime provides open source solutions to libraries, and the acquisition should, according to the press release, “ensure the continuation of [CARE's] products/services well into the future.”

See Carl Grant’s blog article of this morning for his thoughts on the move.

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28
Jul

Computers in Libraries has published a set of four federated search vendor-sponsored white papers: Federated Search For Your Library and in Your Enterprise.

  1. Building a Better Search Query Through Content Mining, by Swets
  2. Discover: It’s Not About Federated Search, it’s About Discovery, by Gale
  3. Primo Discovery and Delivery - Beyond the OPAC: A unified interface for finding and getting all library resources, by ExLibris
  4. Taming Multiple Search Engines in Your Organization, by Jean Bedord

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25
Jul

I keep a list of ideas for articles. On that list I’ve got some items that are quite noteworthy but that I’m not planning to write entire articles about. Here are some of those items:

1. FantasyFootballNerd.com gets my nomination for most unusual use of federated search. Here’s what the press release announcing the site has to say:

FantasyFootballNerd.com today announced the consumer launch of FantasyFootballNerd.com, a comparison fantasy football website that helps users make informed decisions about draft and sit/start choices. It is the first meta-search engine for the estimated 18 million adults who participate in fantasy sports each year.

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24
Jul

Check out this post in the Library Juice blog to see one prediction of the future of federated search. I’d say Rory Litwin is off to a good start if he wants to enter our writing contest.

23
Jul

What are the difficult challenges that federated search vendors are facing? How are they meeting these challenges? Miriam Drake, Professor Emerita at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and one of the judges of the federated search writing contest, asks a number of industry leaders some difficult questions. Drake’s article appears in the July/August edition of Searcher Magazine. The article is not freely available; only this short description appears on the publisher’s site for the current edition:

Miriam Drake talked to a number of federated search developers to get their perspective on issues such as scalability, common names, and reliability and how these areas affect federated search technology and user satisfaction.

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21
Jul

[ 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 second review. The review articulates six challenges to federated search, including “disaggregation,” a term I have to admit, is new to me.

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18
Jul

There are a number of excellent federated search presentations, freely available for downloading, if you know where to find them. The list that follows is my attempt to identify a number of presentations that I consider to be outstanding, either because they provide an excellent overview of federated search, or because they cover some aspect of the industry exceptionally well. Is the list exhaustive? Of course, not. I think of it as a start and I would love to hear your comments about which ones should be added to the list. You should be aware that I favor recent presentations as things change quickly in this industry.

Most of the presentations are in PowerPoint, a few are PDF files, and a couple are in web-based embedded slide show applications. One is a video!

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16
Jul

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Stanford Alumni Association giving federated search access to a number of high profile scholarly sources. Abe read the article and called me, asking why I thought that Stanford was giving federated search access. In that moment I got the “deer in the headlights look” and had the urge to defend my position, even though I hadn’t yet had access to the service Stanford was providing. I noticed myself stating that “there are tons of sources, they must be federated.” In that moment I knew I was in trouble.

Well, I almost have access to the Stanford sources (I need to resolve a login issue) and I’m going to find out really quickly that Abe was (darn it) probably right. In particular, if all of my searches return results super quick then I’m probably searching indexed content. I’ll leave you in suspense for just a few days, wondering whether the Stanford sources are federated or not but I thought that my brazen, and likely incorrect, assumption was good fodder for an instructive article.

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15
Jul

Today, Library Journal put out a special section, “netConnect,” that includes four pretty meaty articles focused on federated search.

Josh Hadro, Associate Editor, LJ netConnect/Technology wrote the introduction to the edition.

I’ve not had time to read and absorb the articles but I wanted you to know about them.

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14
Jul

[ Editor's note: This post is by Abe. Information overload is a subject that's near and dear to his heart. Technology can simplify life or it can complicate it, or both. Federated search is no different. ]

An email that I recently received from Basex, a knowledge management market research consulting company, got me thinking about the role that federated search plays in addressing information overload.

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