The slides are up from the Infonortics Search Engine Meeting that was just held in Boston (4/28-4/29). Here are a number of presentations that caught my eye. Not all are related to federated search but breakthroughs in search should be of interest to all of us.
I wrote recently about Ellie’s review of Roy Tennant’s talk for the Texas Library Association. At the time, I couldn’t find a copy of Tennant’s presentation. So, I contacted Mr. Tennant, and he sent me a link to the presentation with a note that many of the slides are screenshots and, without the context of the verbal presentation, may be cryptic.
Cryptic slides aside, there is very useful material in a number of the slides.
Enjoy.
Ellie of the Ellie <3 Libraries Blog recently wrote a remarkably comprehensive summary, with commentary, of Roy Tennant’s “The Future of Catalogs” presentation for the TLA (Texas Library Association). The gist of her review is that the monolithic library catalog (OPAC) is dying and is being replaced with tools that foster discovery, integration of disparate sources, and Web 2.0 elements such as sharing of information (for getting resource recommendations.)
The world is changing. Library patrons are global citizens. It doesn’t serve the patrons for libraries to remain islands and to cling tightly to their piece of global content. The future, in my view, is Web 2.0 and beyond. More sharing, more collaboration, more mashups, more multimedia, and more global. And, at the same time, everything should become more simple for the user.
Since Deep Web Technologies will be exhibiting at the upcoming Computers in Libraries conference, April 7-9, they received a number of free exhibitor passes that they’re happy to give away.
If you’re going to be in the D.C. area during those dates and want to see the exhibits for free, send me an email to the contact address in this blog’s about page, provide your name and US mail address plus how many you’d like, and I’ll send you passes. First come, first served.
A fair number of federated search and related vendors will be exhibiting at the conference so the exhibits are worth attending even for those not planning to attend the conference. Note that exhibit passes DO NOT allow you to attend the talks.
In November 2006, the National Agricultural Library, one of four U.S. national libraries and stewards of one of the world’s largest agricultural information collections, hosted a NISO conference. Normally, I wouldn’t bore you with a post about a conference over a year old, but in this one, the list of vendors whose staffs delivered presentations reads like a Who’s Who in federated search.
NISO (National Information Standards Organization) is a standards body, accredited by ANSI, that develops, publishes, and maintains standards related to digital information management. Most well known of the NISO standards are ANSI/NISO Z39.2, the basis for the MARC record, ANSI/NISO Z39.2, the ISSN standard for serial numbering, and ANSI/NISO Z39.50, the client/server protocol for information retrieval. NISO also has sponsored a Metasearch Initiative. The Initiative page explains its aim and groundwork laid:
[ Editor’s note: While I (Sol) am the primary author of this blog, Abe does occasionally post. As founder, President, and CTO of Deep Web Technologies, and a pioneer in developing web-based information retrieval, Abe’s posts are very insightful, coming from a great depth of understanding of the federated search industry. Deep Web Technologies, as many of you know, sponsors this blog. You can read more about that in the About page. As editor of the blog I have to walk the fine line of publishing posts that serve my sponsor while not having the blog become a soapbox for Deep Web. What seems fair to me, and I invite discussion, is to permit “soapbox” posts from any vendor of federated search (commercial or otherwise) as long as the post is not primarily self-serving, is of interest and value to the entire federated search community, and is respectful of others. I also welcome guest posts from librarians, bloggers, and others who have a viewpoint to share. Guest posts can question vendor actions, they can raise concerns, they can express opinions, and they don’t have to be particularly nice, but they don’t get to be insulting.
Abe’s post below is an example of a soapbox post that provides value to readers and promotes a couple of presentations that Abe will be giving in May. Contact me at the email address in the About page to discuss your idea for a post. ]
There has been a lot of discussion in recent posts on this blog, especially in Saturday’s CILIP post, and in the earlier post on Is federated search as bad as librarians think? on whether federated search should be used by students and researchers or whether these students would be better off searching information sources directly. I agree with the comments that if there is a researcher who knows which two or three information sources to search then federated search doesn’t provide value to this researcher and he/she should just search these sources directly. However, for the large number of students and researchers who have access to dozens, perhaps hundreds of information sources, and don’t know where the “gem” of an article might be found then federated search is an indispensable tool.
Information Today’s upcoming Computers in Libraries 2008 conference (April 7-9 with pre- and post-conference workshops outside of those dates) looks like it will be of great interest to all parties interested in federated search. Just from browsing the presentation abstracts and exhibitor listings I see that this conference will have a healthy presence of federated search vendors and other companies that incorporate federated search as a part of their business.
The exhibitor list includes several well-known federated search vendors: Deep Web Technologies, ExLibris, Innovative Interfaces, and Serials Solutions. Other vendors who include federated search as part of their products (e.g. publishers) will be present as well.
A number of the presentations will be of interest to the federated search community, including a number that are not directly about federated search. Some examples:
Last October Abe was invited to deliver a presentation at Hunan University in China for the largest conference in Asia geared to librarians and information professionals. The conference was organized by iGroup, an Asia-based distributor of printed and online materials. iGroup, per their web-site has a “staff of more than 260, [and] continue[s] to focus on the information industry, catering to the needs of librarians, students, academics, educators, medical and health workers and research scientists.”
The theme of the conference was “The Role of the Library in the Virtual and Collaborative World” with an emphasis on how libraries can collaborate to better serve their patrons. Abe, and a number of high-profile individuals from the information industry, delivered presentations.
The ALA Midwinter Meeting starts January 11. Aside from the presentations I wrote about earlier a number of federated search vendors are exhibiting at the conference, and some of these vendors are announcing new product launches, giving talks and demonstrating their products. Here are some links to vendor information about their involvement with the conference:
If you know of others let me know and I’ll add an update to this post.
Last month I posted about Education Institute’s upcoming “Federated Search: New Tools and Best Practices” web conference. The conference just happened and here is my review.
Cervone and Wisniewski covered quite a bit of material in the hour allocated for the web conference. Attendees received a 40 page slide show to follow along with during the presentation. The slides covered these subjects:
