[ Editor's note: Charles Knight's claim to fame is that, in the three years that he was editor for AltSearchEngines, Charles posted on some 4,000 alternative search engines. Wow! Charles is now search editor for TheNextWeb. Charles and I had a number of conversations over the past couple of years regarding federated search and alternative search engines. Charles kindly republished some of my Federated Search Blog postings and I even wrote a primer on federated search for Charles' readers.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Charles about the alternative search world. ]

1. What inspired you to start AltSearchEngines three years ago?

   I actually started out doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s fairly straightforward, you study Google’s practices and then apply them to a client’s website, and then another, and then another.

   Along the way I discovered that Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask.com were not the only search engines. I stumbled upon ChaCha, and then Quintura, then KartOO and very quickly I was hooked. The beauty and diversity of each alternative (alternative to Google / the Big 3) search engine just made me want to find more of them. I have always been a collector at heart.

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RUSQ (The Reference & User Services Quarterly journal) has published an article: Student Feedback on Federated Search Use, Satisfaction, and Web Presence: Qualitative Findings of Focus Groups. Here’s a piece of the introduction:

Illinois State University’s Milner Library conducted focus groups in the summer and fall of 2007 as part of its user-centered approach to implementing a federated search engine. The feedback supplemented the comments from usability testing conducted in the summer of 2006. The purpose of the focus groups was to learn about students’ use of and satisfaction with the federated search engine and to gather their ideas on how to incorporate it into the library website.

I’m always delighted to discover articles about how federated search is used and received so I consider this article, published in 2009, to be a good find. The PDF version of the article is nine pages long, long enough to be substantial yet short enough to be an easy read.

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Deep Web expert Marcus Zillman makes freely available a tremendous wealth of resources for people who want to understand the Deep Web, particularly how to search it. His recently published article, Deep Web Research 2010, reminds me of how prolific Mr. Zillman is and that the only fault I can find in Mr. Zillman’s work is the overwhelming volume of resources he provides.

Deep Web Research 2010 provides a list of perhaps 200 resources in 10 categories:

1. Articles, Papers, Forums, Audios and Videos
2. Cross Database Articles
3. Cross Database Search Services
4. Cross Database Search Tools
5. Peer to Peer, File Sharing, Grid/Matrix Search Engines
6. Presentations
7. Resources - Deep Web Research
8. Resources - Semantic Web Research
9. Bot Research Resources and Sites
10. Subject Tracer Information Blogs

There are many fascinating links to follow. I did notice that some of the links were either to sites where one would need to subscribe to a service or buy an article and that some of the links were old and the content could be out of date. But, those concerns aside, one could spend days or weeks getting lost in readings about the Deep Web.

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Over a year ago I published a review of a paper: Initiating the Learning Process - A Model for Federated Searching and Information Literacy. I had recruited a number of volunteers to write reviews of essays from Christopher Cox’s excellent book about federated search. Scott Rice wrote that review.

Those of you who don’t have access to that paper, beyond reading Mr. Rice’s excellent review, can now read a number of the points the paper makes in the Begley Reference Blog. A dozen excerpts from the paper are highlighted.

The excerpt I found most interesting was about “weaning students” from tools like Google and toward more scholarly applications:

“When searching for information, students will utilize strategies that have worked in the past. If they use the Web for academic research and have not been introduced to other search possibilities, they will likely turn to the Web again when faced with a new information need. This is a challenge librarians face when introducing library resources as search alternatives. The search interfaces in many such resources are not always intuitive and easy-to-use. Federated searching provides opportunities to teach students about academic research by introducing search tools that they will want to use. The single search box model that most federated search tools employ provides a way for librarians to bridge the gap between Web searching and database or catalog searching. If librarians can wean students from the Web by presenting them with a similar tool that yields more scholarly results, then part of the process of developing their ability to choose appropriate information retrieval systems will be attained.” (p 249)

The excerpts and the paper itself provide good food for thought about how students and librarians view federated search.

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If you are an outstanding web designer or know one, I’d like to bring your attention to a post in blog sponsor Deep Web Technologies’ Blog: Calling all web designers … RFQ for theme development issued. Here’s part of the post:

We are … excited to announce that we are seeking the services of four (4) web designers (firms or individuals) to construct the CSS and graphic files for a theme for our upcoming Software-as-a-Service based federated search product.

To this effort, we have issued a Request-for-Quote (RFQ), which is available here.

The response deadline is noon (MST), September 15th, 2009, and we will pick four from the available group of responses by September 16th. We want the project to begin as soon as possible, with a deadline for completion of the project by October 16th, 2009.

It’s very important to us to have four (4) great-looking themes by October 16th. We have included a contest within our RFQ, where we will evaluate the themes submitted and award the first-place theme a $2,000 bonus, and the second-place theme a $1,000 bonus. Note: This bonus is only available to those four (4) web designers we have selected from the responses we’ve received to this RFQ.

Please note the short deadline and help us to spread the word. And, even if you’re not a web designer, I recommend that you read the RFQ to learn about an exciting new direction for Deep Web Technologies.

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For those of you who aren’t aware, blog sponsor Deep Web Technologies has its own blog. The blog started in December of last year and has been gaining momentum in recent months.

My brother, Abe, just posted an article on the Deep Web Technologies blog challenging readers to find the oldest reference to the term “federated search” in the literature. The oldest reference Abe could find dates back to May 1996, in an IEEE Computer Magazine article entitled “Federating Diverse Collections of Scientific Literature.”

Can you find an older reference?

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Shortly after committing to write regular in-depth articles I’ve had to shift gears to take on a very important software development project. This project, which I can’t discuss right now, has been consuming me. So, for now, my blogging here will be limited and articles will mostly be of the “check this out” variety.

Check out “Rivals Strive to Topple Google in Quest for the ‘perfect Search’.” The article, not about federated search but certainly relevant to the industry, speaks to the Yahoo!/Microsoft marriage and to other threats to Google’s stranglehold on search. It reminisces on how far the search industry has some since Google’s inception in 1998. It philosophizes about how search has affected all of us, for better and worse. It ponders the future of search.

I particularly appreciated the wisdom in this paragraph about public search as the great equalizer:

But the real power of the internet and search has been to break down gate-keepers. Putting all the information in the world into a form where it can be accessed and searched by anyone has destroyed industries. Just ask journalists, who suddenly find that anyone can listen to a press conference, scan a court case or email a president. Or the music industry, which found the internet had allowed bands to get their music out to the world virtually free. Or publishing. The growth of Amazon and the Kindle electronic book reader is poised to allow anyone to write and sell a book online. It is a democratizing of power to the individual, fueled by the simple fact of allowing people to search for whatever they want without a middle man.

I highly recommend this article to anyone who’s curious about the future of search.

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Government Computer News (GCN) recently produced a special report: “Great dot-gov Web Sites 2009: 10 sites that take online government to the next level.” Science.gov, whose search is powered by this blog’s sponsor Deep Web Technologies, is on the list. The list includes sites that are meeting and exceeding Obama administration transparency goals.

Page 8 of the GCN article explains how “Science.gov breaks down stovepipes of research.”

[W]ith Science.gov, you don’t have to worry about which agency published the research. Led by the Energy Department’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), the site offers a one-stop shop for searching U.S. scientific databases. At last count, you could do a single search of 38 data sources — or about 200 million documents.

In 2001, when they set out to establish a digital scientific library, DOE officials quickly realized that theirs wasn’t the only agency doing scientific research and that citizens would benefit from a cross-agency compilation of resources.

The resulting site represents a considerable coordination effort among numerous federal agencies. Besides OSTI, members of the Science.gov Alliance include the Agriculture and Interior departments, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Disclaimer: I consult for OSTI.

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Technologist and blogger Brett Bonfield wrote an excellent article yesterday on the “In the Library with the Lead Pipe” blog regarding open source software in the library.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

It’s interesting how many people don’t really understand the concept of open source. People often describe freeware as open source, or they’ll describe free web-based applications as open source, or applications with APIs that allow for mashups. There are articles all the time, on some of the most popular websites, that recommend free software but don’t distinguish programs the authors gives away for free from software that is actually open source.

And, here’s my favorite statement:

Perhaps what people associate most closely with open source—free software—is its price tag. However, it is often pointed out that open source software is usually free like a puppy or a kitten: there may be no cost associated with acquiring it, but there’s more involved than just the initial cost.

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Here are snippets from some articles I’ve tweeted in the last week:

Library Systems: Synthesise, Specialise, Mobilise

The business and service model is evolving from acquiring, cataloguing and circulating physical collections to synthesising, specialising and mobilising Web-based services. … The current generation of federated search systems, link resolvers, resource-sharing systems and electronic record management (ERM) systems are starting to address the new model; the approach, however, is somewhat piecemeal, driven by the identification of specific market opportunities.

AL Inside Scoop

Williams [,one of the presenters,] suggested that librarians are a shrinking market for publishers, who are moving toward individual customers. “End users are less fussy,” she said, noting that EBSCO underwrites NPR. Blyberg agreed but added that our front-end interfaces are advancing far beyond our back-end content, calling for better federated search.

Virtual Private Library and Deep Web (video)

99 percent of the trillions of pages on the Web are inaccessible to search engines. Learn how you can tap into this vast deep Web by using the innovative and cutting edge Virtual Private Library.

Top Technology Trends: July 2009

The genre of Discovery Interfaces has been an ongoing trend for the last few years. These interfaces aim to replace the traditional, stodgy OPAC with a modern interface, delivering library content through an interface more consistent with what patrons experience elsewhere on the Web. They offer visually appealing design, relevancy ranking, faceted navigation, and other standard Web navigation techniques. These products offer an attractive replacement for the online catalogs delivered with the ILS.

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