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Taking the Library Back from Google
Abe Lederman, President and CTOiGroup, October 18-20, 2007
Abe Lederman Background Earned B.S. and M.S. Computer Science
degrees, MIT Began work in information retrieval in 1988
• Co-founded Verity Developed one of the earliest web-based
search & retrieval applications, 1994 Pioneered “Deep Web” searching in 1999
• Founded Deep Web Technologies, 2002
The “Google Myth”
If you can’t find it on Google,the information doesn’t exist.
Why Do Students Like Google and Google Scholar?
Quickly searches
accessible informationEasy to searchMulti-Lingual supportFREE
What Students Don’t know
Links for many articles on Google Scholar require subscriber login or an access fee.
Many libraries have already paid for subscriptions.
Other databases may be more relevant to the topic.
Google Scholar advanced search is not very powerful.
So Why NOT Google Scholar?
• “Scholarly content” intermixed with “non-scholarly” content
• Spotty coverage, requires publisher cooperation
• Poor relevance (citation counts don’t seem to help)
• Unable to limit searching to specific sources
• Difficult to find the needles in the haystack
Bringing Relevance Back to the Library
Checking the Library Website…• Reference Libraries
• Deep Web Databases
• Specialized Search Directories
• Specialized Search Engines
• Subscription Databases
• Library Catalogs
“Ask A Librarian!”
Federated Search…
Allows you to search, retrieve, and merge de-duped and relevantly ranked results from multiple high-quality information sources.
In Other Words…One Search, Many Sources
LibraryCatalog
Wikis
SubscriptionSources
Public Web Sources
Blogs
SubscriptionSources
Federated search by any other name….
Metasearch 6,690,000
Meta search 1,840,000
Federated Search 339,000
Distributed search 237,000
Broadcast search 106,000
Distributed information retrieval
70,200
Deep Web Search 24,600
* Number of occurences on Google (Sept. 21, 2007)
Tennant’s Tenets
Roy Tennant: Internationally known speaker and writer on library and information technology issues.
• Only librarians like to search, everyone else likes to find.
• All things being equal, one place to search is better than two or more.
• Services should be placed as close to the user as possible.
Tennant’s Tenets (cont.)
“Good enough” is often just that. Our ability to create effective one-stop
searching is dependent on our ability to appropriately target user needs.
The size of the result set doesn’t matter as much as how the results are presented. (‘the Google Lesson’)
Increase efficiency ofIncrease efficiency of information searchinformation search
Gather the most relevant,Gather the most relevant, important informationimportant information
Make better decisions Make better decisions & fewer mistakes& fewer mistakes
More Users, More Users, Find More Find More
InformationInformation
How can Federated Search help your Patrons?
Benefits of Federated Search
One-Stop AccessSupport of More Efficient ResearchConsolidated, Formatted ResultsAuthentication and Access Control
One-Stop Access Single query search across multiple
disparate sources in real-time:• Subscription services (journals, bibliographic
databases, etc.)
• In-house databases
• Unstructured data (white papers, theses, reports, etc.)
• Catalogs (web-based OPAC)
• Publicly available websites
Information Discovery
Support of More Efficient Research
Results across all selected sources are:• Merged
• Presented in relevance-ranked order
• Sorted
• Clustering
Consolidated, Formatted Results
Filtering and removal of duplicates Ranking by relevance Displaying results by source Permitting results to be
• Downloaded
• Printed
• Automatically emailed using Alerts
Flagging of results from subscribed sources
Authentication and Access Control
Authorization based on:• IP address
• User ID and password
Implementation using:• Proxy server
• Management of session cookies
Different access levels for different user groups• Virtual server support
#1 Benefit to Libraries
Improve your ROI on Licensed Content!
Integrating Trusted Science + Technology Research
What does Federated Search look like?
• 15 leaders in science and technology research• 3 million documents• 150 years of knowledge
Bringing Federated Search to Your Patrons
Clearly Define Requirements
Compile your list of sources to federate
• Access to Internal Sources Licensed Product vs. Managed Solution Staff Resources Timelines Determine features important to users
Will the Real Federated Search Please Step Forward…
Easy-to-Use, Customizable Interface Incremental display of real-time and indexed
results Clustering or Visualization Relevance ranking of results on-the-fly Support Boolean and fielded searching Access sources via multiple protocols
(XML gateway, HTTP, SR/U, SR/W, Z39.50)
Sample Features Checklist
• Integration with URL Resolver
• Integration with EndNote or other export capabilities
• Spell Checker
• Alerts Options
• Export to an RSS Feed
• Advanced Customizability
Vendor Evaluation
Demonstrations and Pilots• User reaction
• Ease of search
• Fulfillment of requirements and features
Relationship• Future Relationship
• Flexibility
The Future of Federated Search
Multi-Lingual Searching Personal Libraries Automated Source Selection
Conclusion
Help Patrons to…• Improve their search
• Find what they need
• Access scholarly sources
• Return to your library
for information
