14
Jan

I’ve written a number of educational articles about federated search for this blog and for other venues but I had always skirted around the issue of explaining what exactly federated search is. Finally, I’ve written a primer for people who are comfortable with search engines but want to understand what federated search is all about.

AltSearchEngines published the primer in three parts: Part I, Part II, Part III.

The primer answers these questions in very understandable terms:

  • How does federated search facilitate research?
  • How do typical search engines crawl the web?
  • What is the trouble with crawling?
  • What makes federated search different?
  • What are three major benefits of federated search?
  • What is a definition of federated search that most people would agree on?
  • What are some good examples of federated search engines I can play with?
  • Where can I learn more?

The primer has already gotten a few good reviews. I want to thank Hope Leman and Jill Hurst-Wahl for their pre-publication reviews of the document.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 9:36 am and is filed under basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or TrackBack URI from your own site.

2 Responses so far to "Federated search primer at AltSearchEngines"

  1. 1 Hope Leman
    January 16th, 2009 at 7:33 am  

    Well, thanks for educating me on the topic! I know so much more now than I did a month ago.

  2. 2 A Primer on “Federated Search”…01.16.09 « The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian’s Weblog
    January 16th, 2009 at 1:21 pm  

    [...] reading from last week about a new primer on federated search is available from Sol Lederman [Federated search primer at AltSearchEngines] on the  AtlSearchEngines blog [...]

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