University of Edinburgh - Website search …€¦ · Web viewEngagement with public sector networks In addition, questions we posted to UK & US Higher Education and UK Local Government

Page 1 of 28

Website search requirements and considerations

ContentsWebsite search requirements and considerations......................................................1

Executive summary.................................................................................................2

1. Context................................................................................................................3

2. Proposed objectives for the University and its website search............................4

2.1 Benefits of meeting objectives.......................................................................4

3. Proposed search results optimisation methodology............................................5

3.1 Impact on website user experience (UX).......................................................5

3.2 Devolved responsibility..................................................................................6

References...........................................................................................................6

4. Considerations for University website search management................................7

4.1 Strategic considerations.................................................................................7

4.2 Organisational considerations........................................................................8

4.3 Editorial considerations..................................................................................8

4.5 Technical considerations................................................................................9

4.6 Ongoing service cost estimates...................................................................10

5. Search engine procurement recommendation...................................................12

6. 2012 site search overhaul project - Recommendations & lessons learned.......13

Appendix 1 – Current search experience..............................................................14

Appendix 2 – Potential future website user experience.........................................15

A prospective PhD student interested in game theory…....................................15

Appendix 3 - Search vendors engagement & investigation...................................19

Engagement with public sector networks...........................................................19

Questions posed to search engine vendors.......................................................19

Vendors engaged...............................................................................................20

Summary of vendor responses..........................................................................21

Appendix 4 – University user group personas.......................................................22

Appendix 5 – University data sources...................................................................23

Neil Allison / Craig MiddlemassUniversity Website Programme, Information Services

Website search requirements and considerations (UWS005)

Page 2 of 28

Executive summaryThe UWS005 project was initiated to undertake research and make recommendations for the future management of the University website’s search functionality.

This paper outlines findings and recommendations arising from desk research, search vendor liaison, internal consultation and a recent search engine implementation project undertaken by the University Website Programme.

It is recommended that the University does not proceed to procure a new search engine in the immediate future.

Instead, it is recommended that over the course of 2013, the University Website Programme leads a search enhancement process with a report delivered to the Website Governance Group in autumn 2013 outlining:

Progress made in delivering improvements to the website search experience with the resources currently available

A recommendation on whether or not to procure a new search tool for implementation during 2014-15

Acting in the role of Website Information Architect, the University Website Programme would:

Propose a process for ongoing site search optimisation, based on the goals set in the University’s Strategic Plan, for ratification by the Website Governance Group

Undertake the ratified process of ongoing editorial improvements to search results on a monthly basis

Investigate, and where possible implement, technical improvements to the search experience utilising the features available within the Google search tool currently in use

Feed search enhancement requirements into the development of business requirements for the new Content Management System

Investigate, and if possible implement, rollout of management of the search engine to schools and units, providing support and guidelines

As a priority, it is also recommended that the University Website Programme and relevant stakeholders in IS give attention to the website’s contact search features as a matter of urgency, to ensure it is as robust and well supported as all other aspects of the website service.

Recent search engine work has highlighted a need for more formal support and management of processes that have been in place for at least 15 years and are not sufficiently documented and understood. This current situation presents a risk to the smooth operation of University business, as contact search is the primary reason for staff use of the website.



Page 3 of 28

1. ContextA search is conducted on the University website at least every 13 seconds; on average over 6500 searches per day and over 2.25 million searches per year1.

The website’s search engine results page is the second-most viewed page on the website; after the homepage.

In recent years, the University’s website search has been delivered using a free service from Google, with no optimisation of search results to support business objectives or enhance user experience.

An audit in early 2012 identified that this free service was planting privacy-invasive cookies on website visitors’ devices, in contravention of EU online privacy legislation.

As a result, it was agreed that the University would move to a paid Google service2 as a short term measure, as this was identified by the University Website Programme as the most straightforward step to deal relatively quickly with the compliance issue.

This project (UWS005) was initiated to:

Investigate and propose a long-term model for search engine management that takes advantage of the opportunities afforded by the use of a paid site search service

Conduct initial liaison with search engine vendors to identify the range of services available in the market and their potential costs (to support a potential future procurement exercise)

Conduct initial liaison with internal data source owners, website managers and business representatives to establish the range of current practice and the appetite for engagement in more proactive use of site search tools.

1 Google Analytics data, October 2011 to October 2012. Does not cover all schools and data sources.2 See Appendix 1 for a screenshot



Page 4 of 28

2. Proposed objectives for the University and its website searchIt is proposed that the University aspires to:

- Empower website users to achieve more useful results, more quickly

- Prioritise results to promote University strategic objectives

- Inform content development and curation priorities, based on user demand illustrated in search term logs

These objectives should be actively monitored through a range of metrics, and reported upon regularly.

2.1 Benefits of meeting objectivesMeeting these objectives would:

- Focus the website to more coherently support University strategic objectives (for example, prioritising staff research profiles or postgraduate programmes over other content)

- Bring greater efficiency in University business (for example, website users empowered to greater self-service will generate fewer unnecessary queries and fewer unsuitable applications)

- Encourage editors to better content management practices; informing content creation and curation priorities (again bringing greater efficiency to an aspect of University business)



Page 5 of 28

3. Proposed search results optimisation methodologyThe underlying process of optimising site search results is a fundamentally simple one:

1. Identify top terms typed into the website search box2. Map these terms to authoritative content3, informed by University strategy and

perceived website user goals at particular points in the site3. Repeat this process regularly

This methodology needs to be repeated on a number of fronts:

At regular intervals – to monitor and address changes in user demanded content through the academic cycle

On a devolved basis – top search terms for a sub site such as a school can be significantly different than for the whole, and the most appropriate result depends on the context of where the user was when they initiated the search

Focusing also on University priorities – because some content may not be in high demand, but be critical to strategic goals.

3.1 Impact on website user experience (UX)As with many aspects of website management, we see a ‘long neck’ in search term popularity. Focusing on this across a number of fronts will have a disproportionately high impact on the website’s ease of use.

For example, across the website as a whole, during 2011-12:

The top 20 queries account for 11.6% of all searches. The top 200 queries account for 25.8% of all searches.

Figure 1 A small number of search terms is disproportionately popular

3 The means by which we map content to results depends on a number of factors. Search engine management tools provide a range of options. See Section 4.5 for core functionality list.



Page 6 of 28

So if we assume that 50% of website users are search-dominant, some relatively elementary site search improvements have a significant impact on the user experience:

50% of all users are search dominantx 26% (best bet results for top 200 queries) 13% improvement to the UX

And this principle applies to other areas of the search experience, for example misspellings:

50% of users are search dominantx 5% of all queries are typos, fixed by spell checking 2.5% improvement to the UX

3.2 Devolved responsibility

To be able to undertake this process across the website, local website content knowledge is required. Staff responsible for optimising search results for sub-sites should also be the staff responsible for managing these sites.

Appendix 2 outlines a possible user experience were search results to be prioritised according to user demand and business objectives.

References

- Search analytics for your site by Lou Rosenfeld: http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/searchanalytics/

- Search Patterns by Peter Morville & Jeffert Callenderhttp://searchpatterns.org/

- Analytics, site search and understanding user behaviour blog post:http://bit.ly/OCHAmD



http://bit.ly/OCHAmD

http://searchpatterns.org/

http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/searchanalytics/

Page 7 of 28

4. Considerations for University website search management

Proposed governance of website search, and the relationships between an Information Architect and content managers

4.1 Strategic considerationsAchieving the proposed University objectives for website search require a sufficiently skilled person – an Information Architect – working to a strategy (derived from the University’s Strategic Plan) ratified by the Website Governance Group.

The role of Information Architect needs to encompass both search and navigation strategy; a holistic approach which in turn contributes to the development of University web-related guidelines and the underlying Content Management System (CMS).

Content attributes assigned by web publishers (and potentially website visitors) across the University have the potential to influence search engine results, so the Information Architect’s input into CMS development in features such as content weighting, taxonomy and user feedback/rating is important.

Integrating and prioritising content from key University systems (for example, Phone and Email Directories, the Degree Finder, Edinburgh Research Explorer etc) is also an important consideration. The Information Architect should maintain strong relationships with relevant service owners to ensure results are integrated



Page 8 of 28

appropriately and system developments include the considerations of a holistic search service).

Regular reporting on search engine performance and website users’ search behaviour should in turn be used to inform strategy and web editorial guidance.

4.2 Organisational considerationsAn individual (or team) working at the centre would be unlikely to know enough about the business priorities of specific schools and units to be able to optimise search results to any great degree.

Optimal search results for a particular school site or data source would be achieved through local web managers including site search optimisation activities in their role. The specific tasks would be exactly the same as those undertaken by the lead University Information Architect, only applied to a greater level of detail.

In some areas of the institution, resource is not available for such a task (as with other aspects of website management). This lack of resource would not result in reduced search functionality but the unit would not benefit from opportunities arising from more closely managed site search activity.

At the most basic level (in much the same way as the central Polopoly CMS service looks after occasional site admin tasks for units without the necessary resource) local site search would be managed centrally.

This requirement for devolution of control for local site search optimisation presents considerations for system procurement. Specifically, the search system must:

- Enable a central resource to administer permissions to specific users to manage search for specific areas of content

- Be sufficiently user friendly to enable non-technical staff to undertake priority tasks on an occasional basis with minimal user support

4.3 Editorial considerationsAs with management of a school or unit website, effective management of local search requires the web manager to:

- Have a clear understanding of the objectives of the business and how the website helps to achieve them

- Have sufficient time and resource to iteratively appraise and improve it, measured against performance indicators derived from business objectives

As with website management, these prerequisites are not always in place in every school and department. However, their absence would not prevent a web manager from taking over responsibility for search management.

As with the management of a website, the impact of decisions made around search optimisation would be local; restricted to ‘Just this site’ results. (See Appendix 1)



Page 9 of 28

Based on trials of the methodology outlined in Section 3 by the University Website Programme, we estimate that significant enhancement of the performance of top search terms could be achieved for a school or unit site with a commitment of 2-4 hours per month. There are a number of variables that would increase or decrease this figure on a site-by-site basis:

- The size of the site and website users’ demand for search- How well the website manager knows the content and business objectives- How often the website manager undertakes the optimisation task- Whether part of the process could be shared or devolved within the school or

unit.

4.4 Content management considerations

An actively managed search engine and an Information Architect role also provide opportunities for transparency about how the search engine ranks results.

This means that website editors can make more informed decisions in their content management practices to ensure particular pages are more highly ranked (or demoted) in results pages.

Involving the Information Architect in the development of existing and future Content Management Systems will help ensure that well informed decisions are made about content attributes such as metadata and taxonomy.

The ideal scenario involves the functionality of the University search engine and the corporate CMS evolving in a coordinated fashion, with the strategy and operational decisions available to managers of all other CMS publishing University content.

4.5 Technical considerations

Site search technical trendsThe search providers that responded to our investigation4 for an alternative search engine all have a similar core to their search product.

The core functions that each offer relate to:

1. How the search engine acts in relation to the website user experience, via features that allow searches to be

a. pre-empted (auto population, correction)b. assisted (filtering and faceting) c. or, influenced (context sensitive search, spotlighting).

2. How the search engine reacts to or interprets content:a. Ranking of results when searching for an associated termb. Separating content types (videos, images, documents)c. Separating content attributes (research, study, course)

4 See appendix 3 for a log of vendor engagement and responses



Page 10 of 28

In addition to the core functions, providers try to differentiate themselves by offering a variety of tools to try to make them unique in the market. Given the University’s content management practices and the current level of sophistication in its approach to search management, it’s recommended that these be discounted.

A complete list of terminology and functionality is included in the Glossary of Terms ( http://bit.ly/TYNHz3 ) on the UWS005 project website.

Best fit for the UniversityMost vendors cover all the core functions which the University is likely want to adopt in order to improve the website user experience and to control the search results.

However, while the core functionality across the vendors considered is very similar, the level of control for fine tuning (via, say, meta data management or search engine configuration) varies.

Therefore, the level of resource the University is willing to invest to take advantage of such controls, and to steer their use through strategic planning and user group liaison, should be established prior to procuring a new search engine.

Criteria for selectionAssuming resource is made available to manage the search function as outlined in Section 3, the procurement will need to be weighted in order to expose the main differentiating factors of importance to the University. These are:

- Cost of ownership- Ability to devolve editorial responsibility (to undertake the activity outlined in

Section 3)- Usability of the tool (bearing in mind the likely users at school and unit level –

see personas in Appendix 4)

4.6 Ongoing service cost estimatesBeyond the initial project that would be required to procure, install, configure and pilot rollout of a search service, there would be a number of ongoing service costs as outlined in the proposals above.

Activity Resource commitment estimateSearch engine licence, plus hosting £90K - £200K5, plus server up to £20K

(for 5 years)Apps Support 6-18 days per yearInformation Architect role 0.5FTE2nd line service support 0.2FTE1st line service support IS HelplineSchool-based search management (as outlined in the methodology in Section 2)

6 days per year

5 See Appendix 3 for breakdown of costs by vendor



http://bit.ly/TYNHz3

Page 11 of 28

Potentially additional projects could be initiated to focus on enhancing the search experience of specific data sources6 such as PURE or the degree finders.

6 See Appendix 5 for list of data sources engaged with during project



Page 12 of 28

Roles involved- Technical resource managing – this role would mainly be fulfilled by IS

Production Management, essentially providing the infrastructure for running the search engine including the day to day system management including:

o Hosting (if in-house hosting is the chosen approach)o Application managemento Website integrationo Vendor liaison

- Information Architect – this role could be integrated into the University Website Programme team, effectively working as service provider and business lead engaging on strategy and support for community. The role should include:

o Overarching website search strategy development & implementationo Service reportingo Indexing managemento User group consultation & liaisono CMS & other system liaisono Interface development management

- Service support – IS Helpline would be expected to handle first line support with backup from the UWP if an unscripted problem was encountered (as is the case for Polopoly and other associated services).

o User administrationo User training & support o Service liaison with IS Production Management

- Unit-based web managerso Local website search strategy implementationo See appendix 4 personas



Page 13 of 28

5. Search engine procurement recommendationIt is recommended that the University does not proceed to procure a new search engine to deliver its website search at this stage.

Given the University’s current level of active site search management, it is not considered to be cost-effective to undertake a procurement exercise at this stage.

Instead, it is recommended that over the course of 2013, the University Website Programme (acting in the role of Website Information Architect) proceeds to implement the strategic and editorial recommendations made in Sections 2 & 3 of this paper, and investigates (implementing where feasible) new search features available within the Google service currently in use.

During the autumn of 2013, a review point should be set with a report produced for the Website Governance Group that outlines the progress made (both with regard to improvements in the search user experience and in the devolvement of management) and the case, if appropriate, for procurement of a new search tool for implementation in 2014-15.



Page 14 of 28

6. 2012 site search overhaul project - Recommendations & lessons learned It was identified early in 2012 that the current website search, powered by the free Google search service, was not a viable option for the future. The key driver for change at this point was that this free search planted privacy invasive cookies on website users’ devices, in contravention of new EU privacy legislation.

The decision was made to make an interim move to the paid Google-hosted search service while the project generating this paper (UWS005) was undertaken to propose a longer-term approach.

What had been anticipated to be a relatively straightforward switch uncovered a number of issues, resulting in the changeover being delayed and additional considerations being added to this proposal document.

The key issues arising:

- Phone and email searches are largely unmanaged, and rely on code developed in the late 1990s.

- Limited understanding existed of their hosting and integration into website and MyEd. Minimal work was done to enable the search engine changeover project to proceed, but further work is required to ensure a more robust and actively managed service in future.

It is recommended that regardless of decisions on a website search management model and search tool, a project be undertaken to:

- Fully understand how phone and email search work- Develop the searches sufficiently to be able to handover to a service

management team- Identify a service management team to take responsibility and resource

appropriately to undertake this role



Page 15 of 28

Appendix 1 – Current search experienceNew site search from January 2013

The introduction of a paid Google search, and limited technical development provided by the University Website Programme resulted in significant improvements to the search interface and user experience.



Page 16 of 28

Appendix 2 – Potential future website user experienceTo illustrate the potential of an actively managed search engine (both at the centre and in schools and units) and well integrated key data sources, the following potential user experience has been mocked up.

In the absence of a ratified strategy for search promotion, this experience assumes the University wishes to prioritise content relating to postgraduate student recruitment, research staff activity and news. It also assumes that the School of Economics is prioritising PhD recruitment and promotion of its research.

With each screenshot, the user journey is described, along with the likely requirements to deliver it.

A prospective PhD student interested in game theory…

1. Arrives at the School of Economics home page, and decides to search for “game theory”



Page 17 of 28

2. The student is presented with search results from across the University website by default.

A feature box promotes postgraduate study opportunities whenever relevant search results are available, using data from the Degree Finder.

The Institute of Applied Economics is prioritised ahead of natural search results as the most appropriate organisational unit.

Academic staff most relevant to the search term are drawn from PURE, with the opportunity to view more results.

Most recent news articles relevant to the search term are drawn from (potentially) multiple sources.



Page 18 of 28

3. The student switches to the ‘Just Economics’

Content is now drawn only from the website www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/economics

The School promotes PhD study opportunities whenever a relevant search term is used and also maps specific search terms to its research units meaning that the first natural result is placed third.

School staff are prioritised in the right hand column, as for the whole University search but the School chooses to link to a full list of staff hosted on their website rather than link to a staff search of PURE data. (This might be because a PURE staff search on “game theory” also returns staff from the Business School, Maths and Informatics.)

The School also chooses to promote its programme of lectures, workshops and public engagement events drawing data from a local source system.



http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/economics

Page 19 of 28

4. Before choosing a result from the School of Economics, the student explores the additional results available to him.

The use of a dropdown list here is for illustrative purposes only, and probably not the best way to present additional search options.

Research Explorer and Jobs are distinct data sources with their own search engines indexing them. Using a corporate web search tool as illustrated:

Could potentially bring additional search functionality not present currently Would definitely enhance the user experience by not requiring them to visit a

specific starting point within the website to conduct a particular kind of search.

‘Courses, fees and funding’ could potentially amalgamate multiple data sources to pull together search results of priority information for prospective students.

The Library already operates several specialist search solutions that the corporate web search would be highly unlikely to better. However, it may be desirable to provide an initial view on Library resources via the search box present on every web page.



Page 20 of 28

Appendix 3 - Search vendors engagement & investigationMarket research was carried out to identify potential vendors of an alternative search engine.

Twelve vendors were identified and asked for information about their search engine. Five of these responded with sufficient information to assist in the analysis for this paper and all are viable suppliers of a new search engine.

One open source option is included; while there are no licencing costs there will be implications of taking on an open source solution, including development, maintenance and tuning all having to be completed by University staff, with no supplier support.

Two of the suppliers (Attivio and Funnelback) displayed noticeable enthusiasm to work with the University and work on a road map to define what the University needs right now to get started and looking for the future to fuller search engine use.

Engagement with public sector networksIn addition, questions we posted to UK & US Higher Education and UK Local Government web management discussion groups. Here we asked about the search tool they were using, how they were managing it and how satisfied they were.

Responses were limited with two very enthusiastic endorsements of Funnelback from universities. Most reported moving away from Google services as a result of review exercises.

Questions posed to search engine vendorsThe following suppliers were all contacted about their products and asked to respond to a number of questions related to their search offering:

1. Details of your search engine and how content management (including creation of metadata) can be used to drive search results including prioritising content

2. How to use facetted searches in order to narrow down or separate search results based on the type of information and source (e.g. news items from the University versus research data from our library system).

3. What analytical reporting does your search engine provide and how could we use this in a continuous review of our content and common search results

4. A rough indication of charging structure and cost for using your search engine (e.g. onsite vs hosted and flat rate vs pay per search)

5. An outline of your licensing (e.g. should we purchase the search engine for use on the main University website and then expand it to cover searches on intranets for schools within the University would this incur an increase in licence fee).



Page 21 of 28

Vendors engagedThe following table details the search engine vendors approached and the nature of their response.

Search Provider Website Letter Sent

Response Received

Endeca Information Discovery (EID)

http://www.oracle.com/partners/index.html

Yes Yes

Attivio http://www.attivio.com/ Yes Yes

Autonomy http://www.autonomy.com/ Yes No

Amazon Cloudsearch

http://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/ Yes No

Google Search Appliance

http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/enterprise/search/

Yes Yes

Bing Yes No

Funnelback http://www.funnelback.com/home Yes Yes

Vivismo http://vivisimo.com/ Yes Yes

Ask Partner Network

http://apn.ask.com/ Yes No

Yahoo / AltavistaAltavista closed business now operated by Yahoo

Yes No

Lycos http://info.lycos.com/about/contact-us Failed N/A

Apache Solr http://lucene.apache.org/solr/N/A

(Open source)

N/A

(Open source)

Thunderstonehttp://www.thunderstone.com/texis/site/pages/

Yes In Progress



http://www.thunderstone.com/texis/site/pages/

http://www.thunderstone.com/texis/site/pages/

http://lucene.apache.org/solr/

http://info.lycos.com/about/contact-us

http://apn.ask.com/

http://vivisimo.com/

http://www.funnelback.com/home



http://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/

http://www.autonomy.com/

http://www.attivio.com/



Page 22 of 28

Summary of vendor responsesOf the vendors that responded to our approach, the following table summarises the key considerations and costs (as currently understood) of their service.

Vendor Endeca

Attivio Funnelback

Google Hosted7

Google Search Appliance

Vivisimo Solr

Core Function8

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Licence Model

Peak Load Based

Negotiable

No of pages indexed

No of Searches

No of pages indexed

Capacity of Information index

Open Source

Hosted or in house

In House

In House In House9 Hosted In House In House In House

Estimated Licence Cost

£123k Negotiable

£45k N/A N/A TBC N/A

Estimated Renewal Fee

£27k per annum

Negotiable

£9k per annum

N/A £10k after 2 years

TBC N/A

Estimated Hosted Cost

N/A N/A N/A £34k per annum

N/A TBC N/A

Our hosting cost

£20k £20k £20k £4k10 N/A TBC £20k

Total 5 year cost

£278k Negotiable+ server

£110k £174k £124k11 £xxx,xxx+ server

Dev + Server

7 This is the current model the University of Edinburgh is operating.8 See section 3.5 for an overview of core functions9 Funnelback also offer a hosted service. Costs of this have not been clarified at this stage.10 Currently paying £2k for a single virtual machine but this will expand to 2 machines to provide a test environment. 11 Based on Google Search Appliance GSA GB-7007-2M-EU (£94,000 for appliance and 2 years’ worth of support).



Page 23 of 28



Page 24 of 28

Appendix 4 – University user group personasAs the managers of local search experience will also be the managers of school and unit websites, the Polopoly user group personas below provide a good illustration of the participants in a future devolved search management network.

Unit-based web managers have a range of time, influence, skills and experience:

- Annabel: Non-specialist, time-poor, with limited awareness of or influence on, business objectives. The majority of the University web publishing community. In some units, the role of web manager or lead publisher falls to Annabel.

- Colin: Has a significant proportion of their time given over to internal and/or internal communications. Not necessarily technically adept, but a competent user of systems with a good understanding of what the business is trying to achieve with its online presence and other communications channels. Likely to have an influence over the approach taken.

- Terry: Technical specialist who would typically look to minimise their involvement in low-tech and day-to-day web related activities. Potentially has some awareness or interest in what the business is trying to achieve, but not necessarily from a communications or marketing perspective.

CMS User personas – developed and used by the University Website Programme to inform discussion and decisions around user support and technical development



Page 25 of 28

Appendix 5 – University data sourcesDuring the analysis a number of University data sources were identified as being providers of information that contribute to the University’s strategic goals.

An IS Business Analyst contacted each of the data source owners to see if they had thought about how their content could be better represented by the University search engine.

Of the 16 data sources identified 7 were willing to actively engage with the project and provided a useful insight into what their systems provided and any limitations they were currently facing with their own search engine.

Engagement primarily took place via email and phone, with one face-to-face meeting attended by representatives of Communications & Marketing, PURE and DRPS.

A number of issues arose from the discussion with data source owners that have a direct impact on any new search engine, most notable:

The existing publishing mechanism for the degree finder loses meta data in the transfer, this has the impact of making all the meta data the same for all content limiting the ability to influence search result beyond the name of the degree (no meta data)

The DRPS has good quality meta data but lacks reference to academic year of the course or published date as such the search engine treats historic and current courses in equal regard (incomplete meta data)

PURE contains lots of meta data but the search engine offers very limited filtering and no faceting of results therefore devaluing the meta data on offer (no search engine fine tuning)

The Events calendar from CAM is based on Google calendar entries and as such is not currently searchable (incompatible source data)

Issues such as these show that the introduction of a new search engine in itself will not necessarily bring significant improvements to the search experience of these important data sources.

A well configured and actively managed search will mitigate the impact of some of these challenges, but it will only be through the evolution of data sources, changes in web publishing methods and actively managed relationships, that the real benefit of this content will be realised.

While this project is not tasked with bringing data sources up to a minimum spec in order to exploit a new search engine, the role of Information Architect will need to engage with the data source owners and potential raise future developments to leverage the benefits of a new search engine.

The following list details the data sources identified as having important information that could be presented or discovered via a customised search engine.



Page 26 of 28

System Summary of Content & Functionality Searchable across University website

PURE - Edinburgh Research Explorer

www.research.ed.ac.uk

Search engine for:

Research staff Projects Events* Press Activities

*Events are the only facet of their search that does not appear on the University web search.

Research explorer for PURE is targeted toward discovery of content rather than searching.

PURE contains lots of tags (metadata) but suffers from limited filtering and no faceting of search results.

Mostly

Main Library Catalogue www.catalogue.lib.ed.ac.uk

Search for library resources

Search engine TBC

No

Edinburgh Research Archive www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk

Search through research publications

Current uses basic Google search

Yes

Edinburgh Research and Innovation

www.research-innovation.ed.ac.uk (externally facing)

www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-research-innovation (for University staff)

Search of:

research publications projects consultancy and facilities Company formation technology licensing R&D collaborations

Currently uses basic Google search

There are two facets of ERI, the externally available publications and Polopoly-driven EDLAN-only content for staff (the internal site is not currently searchable)

External Site - Yes

Polopoly Site - No

Experts Directory Used by Public Relations team for contacts on experts in a particular fields of study

No



http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-research-innovation



http://www.research-innovation.ed.ac.uk/

http://www.research-innovation.ed.ac.uk/

http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/

http://www.catalogue.lib.ed.ac.uk/

http://www.catalogue.lib.ed.ac.uk/

http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/

http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/

Page 27 of 28

System Summary of Content & Functionality Searchable across University website

New Archive

http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/all-news/archive

Complete library of new publications. Yes

Events Calendar

www.ed.ac.uk/news/events/latest

Date ordered view of all events with minimal detail and links to main material.

Currently pulled data from Google Calendar

Not searchable

No

Jobs (old - www.jobs.ed.ac.uk)

(new - https://www.vacancies.ed.ac.uk/)

Old Jobs appear in the University search results, although the new vacancies do not (old links are repointed to the new site).

No

Degree Regulations and Programme of Study

EUCLID driven publishing, uses a Google search at present, not customised.

Yes

Scholarship and Student Funding Services

Search of:

Scholarships and bursaries based on level of study, nationality and subject area

A-Z listing of scholarships some for schools, some external

No

Degree Finders (online prospectuses)

Undergraduate: www.ed.ac.uk/studying/undergraduate/degrees

Postgraduate: www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees

Visiting: www.ed.ac.uk/studying/visiting-exchange/course-finder

Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Visiting student prospectuses are distinct databases.

UG: Search by course title or UCAS code PG: Filter by school Visiting: Filter by field content

Results are searchable from the main University website but are generally outperformed by other content unless search by specific degree title or ucas code as the publishing route currently strips out meta data.

Yes



http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/visiting-exchange/course-finder



http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees



http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/undergraduate/degrees



https://www.vacancies.ed.ac.uk/

https://www.vacancies.ed.ac.uk/

http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/

http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/events/latest

http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/events/latest



Page 28 of 28

Full details of the discussions with the data source providers is available on the UWS005 project website (http://bit.ly/14vyQU1)



http://bit.ly/14vyQU1

Documents

University of Edinburgh - Website search …€¦ · Web viewEngagement with public sector networks In addition, questions we posted to UK & US Higher Education and UK Local Government