[ Editor’s note: Once upon a time, when I was doing much more software development than I am doing today, I found myself with a project where I had to deal with the differences between SRU and SRW. The world of web services and their related standards was quite mysterious to me at the time. Carl Grant, President of CARE Affiliates, reviews an essay in Christopher Cox’s book about federated search that discusses these two standards in the context of a number of standards of interest to the federated search and library community. While you’ll need to read the actual essay to understand the standards, Carl Grant does a fine job of reviewing how the chapter treats SRU, in particular.

Given the quality of the essays in Mr. Cox’s book plus the severe lack of any books related to federated search, I highly recommend the book. You can purchase a copy of Mr. Cox’s book of essays from the publisher, Taylor & Francis, who donated the review copies, by calling their Customer Service department, Monday-Friday 9 A.M. – 5 P.M. EDT, at (800) 634-7064.

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The writing contest that I announced June 2nd has grown in some very exciting ways. Several of us who are involved in the planning of the contest wanted to create an event that would have tremendous impact for the career of the top prize winner so we’ve changed some key details of the contest to accommodate its expansion.

The first change, really an addition, is that we got the planners of the Computers In Libraries Conference to schedule time during their 2009 Conference (March 30-April 1) to have the top prize winner present his or her essay and share thoughts about their vision. That by itself can bring one’s career to the next level or be that powerful first break that a new graduate can greatly benefit from. And, contest sponsor Deep Web Technologies will pick up the winner’s travel and lodging expenses. Plus, the $500 grand prize is a nice bonus on top of that.

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Sesam.no has released Sesat (Sesam Search Application Toolkit) as open source software. Sesat is middleware - it sits between data sources and the search portal that users interact with. An announcement of Sesat’s release is provided here.

I had a discussion, via email, with Mick Wever about Sesat; he’s one of the active maintainers of the Sesat platform. Following are some excerpts of our dialogue.

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Next Friday I will publish a list of what I think are the best federated search slide presentations of the last 12 months. I’ve got some ideas and would like your suggestions. Vendor presentations are welcome if they inform or educate readers about the industry.

I also plan to write other “best of” articles. What are your favorite federated search blog articles from the blogosphere? Nominate posts from your own blog or from another one you frequent. For a different article I’d like to know what web articles best articulate challenges of the industry.

Send in those ideas (by email or comment) and give kudos to a worthy vendor, organization, or blog owner.

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Some of you may recall an article I wrote in April, Federated search in the enterprise. That article speaks to how information is organized in a fundamentally different way in the enterprise than in the internet-at-large and how federated search vendors wanting to enter the enterprise search market need to think differently about how to craft solutions. A recent study adds a new wrinkle to providing search to the enterprise - their data is frequently not searchable.

AIIM recently published an article, Enterprise Search Frustrates and Disappoints Users. If the title weren’t depressing enough, check out the subtitle: “69% of respondents report that less than half of enterprise information is searchable online.” This article, and the associated study, is about enterprise search. What’s the relevance of the article to federated search?

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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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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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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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[ 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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[ 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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