9
Jul
UC Berkeley Professor Marti Hearst has just completed Search User Interfaces, an academic book on the topic. Cambridge University Press will be releasing print copies in September but the full text is available online now for free.
The terms of service for the online version of the book does not permit posting any of its contents so, even though short excerpts from the book would probably be acceptable fair use, I’ll respect the terms of service and I won’t be quoting from the book in this article.
I don’t consider this series of articles to be a formal review of the book but more of a sampling of ideas I found interesting and instructive.
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28
Jun
When I reviewed Going Beyond Google I made a mental note to try to find an inexpensive consumer-oriented guide to performing research in the deep Web. While Going Beyond Google is a great book that I highly recommend for use in LIS programs, the book is a class text and at $65 it’s not a book that is aimed at the masses.
When I learned about About.com’s $18 guide to Online Research I became very curious to see if I had found a complement to Going Beyond Google. I got a review copy from the publisher and what follows are my impressions of the book.
The Online Research book is authored by Wendy Boswell, About.com’s guide to Web Search. The book is 276 pages long and has 15 chapters plus several appendices. The book was published in 2007. While this may seem pretty current, depending on what month the book was published it might be two and a half years old. That’s getting old given the numerous references to web resources.
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12
Jan
Web 2.0 is a fascination of mine. I’m very community oriented and I’ve watched the computer industry evolve over the past nearly thirty years. I’m very excited about the potential for people and computers to change the world and to help solve our most pressing problems.
Lorcan Dempsey took a look at O’Reilly’s “Programming Collective Intelligence” and he inspired me to look at the book as well. I blogged about Lorcan’s blog article and was able to get a review copy of the book.
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3
Nov
Late last month, Free Pint Limited published a document, Federated Search Report and Tool Kit. The report was authored by Jill Hurst-Wahl. Jill has an extensive background in information technology and library science. Her web-site has additional biographical information beyond the following paragraph:
Jill Hurst-Wahl has worked in and around information for most of her life. Her background is in information technology and library science. She has been both a programmer/analyst and a corporate librarian. While a corporate librarian, she worked on competitive intelligence research projects and helped to build a competitive intelligence system that used digitization as one of the methods of inputting information. That was more than 15 years ago and Jill has continued to do work both in the areas of digitization and competitive intelligence.
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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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11
Jul
[ 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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25
Jun
[ 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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16
May
[ Editor's note: Carl Grant, President of CARE Affiliates, was one of the volunteers who took me up on my offer to review several chapters of Christopher Cox’s book about federated search. Following is his review of one of the chapters: “Developing the Right RFP for Selecting Your Federated Search Product: Lessons Learned and Tips from Recent Experience” by Jerry Caswell and John Wynstra.
I appreciate that this review comes from a seasoned federated search vendor; Carl Grant has been in the library automation industry for a long time and raises an important concern about the RFP process, how his experience is that the current RFP model doesn’t really serve the customer or vendor, and he touches on what he sees as a better approach.
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18
Mar
Last December I wrote about a forthcoming book: Federated Search: Solution or Setback for Online Library Services. (Ignore the links in my earlier blog post; Haworth Press is now part of Taylor & Francis and many Haworth Press links no longer work.) The book is available now and, by courtesy of Taylor & Francis, I have three review copies to give away.
What I am going to do is to send copies of the book to the first three people who email me at the address in the blog’s About page and who commit to reviewing three or more chapters of the book for publication in this blog. I will acknowledge you as guest author and link to your blog or web-site if you like. The book is a compilation of articles so you don’t need to read the whole book to review several of the articles. Once you receive your book I will ask you to select several articles that you wish to review and I may ask you to change a selection or two as I will coordinate among the three reviewers to ideally have no overlap.
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