© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. By Abe Lederman President and CTO June 26, 2011 Understanding Differences Between Federated Search and Discovery Services

© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc.

By Abe LedermanPresident and CTO

June 26, 2011

Understanding Differences Between Federated Search and

Discovery Services

© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 2

About Deep Web Technologies...

•Founded by Abe Lederman in 2002–A co-founder of Verity–20+ years in information business

•24 person company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico

•Over $5M in R&D•Pioneered federated search•Developed high profile applications


Federated Search allows users to submit a real-time search in parallel to multiple information sources and retrieve aggregated, ranked and de-duplicated results.

What Is Federated Search?


Public WebSources

One Search, Many Sources

Blogs

eBooks

Enter Your Search… Begin Search

Internal Databases

Journals

Wikis

SubscriptionSources


•It is too slow•Connectors break•Brings back too few results from

each source•Brings back too many results•Unable to rank results well (meta-

data differences, lack of info)

Federated Search Has Gotten A Bad Rap


Federated Search vs. Discovery Services

Federated Search

Discovery Service

Index No Index One unified index

Sources No limit Must have agreements

Content Bias None Possibly

Information Currency

Real-time return Depends on index update

Preparation Connector Development

Index Development

Speed 2 – 30 seconds 1 – 2 seconds

Control Select sources No ability to select

Alerts Yes Some


Landscape is Not So Clear

• Summon (ProQuest)– Discovery Service

• EDS (EBSCO)– Discovery Service + Federated Search

• WorldCat Local (OCLC)– Discovery Service + Federated Search

• Primo (Ex Libris)– Discovery Service + Federated Search

• Encore Synergy (Innovative Interfaces)– Limited Discovery Service + Federated Search

• Explorit (Deep Web Technologies)– Federated Search


Content Neutrality

Do you comply with the International Coalition

of Library Consortium (ICOLC) Statement, Principle 3?

“We encourage publishers to allow their content to be made available through numerous vendors appropriate for their subject matter. We also encourage online providers and aggregators to allow their metadata to be included in emerging discovery layer services on a non-exclusive basis.”

--Carl Grant, "Gladiators" to perform sleight-of-hand at Charleston Conference.” Commentary from Carl Grant. October 30, 2010.


Content Neutrality-Points by Carl Grant

•Is there unbiased ranking of content?•Does competition have access to

content?•Can you control the ranking of

results?•Does the library have control over

their content?


Lack of Transparency of Discovery Service Vendors

•What is being indexed?–Which Journals/Databases–What period is covered

•Currency of information•Indexing full-text vs. meta-

data only


Ability to Integrate

•How easy/hard/expensive/time consuming is it to add my catalog and other internal/special sources to index?

•How well do you authenticate/ integrate with link resolvers?


When Should You Choose Federated Search?

•Access to up-to-date information is important.

•You want control of your sources.•You want to search internal/non-

mainstream sources•Your research is specialized (ex.

medical/legal)•You have a wide range of subscribed

content (ex. EBSCO and ProQuest)


Getting Federated Search Right

•Display results incrementally•Proactively monitor information sources•Optimized connectors bring back

greater number of high quality results•Do relevance ranking well•Present best results through filters and

clusters







More Reading…

•Federated Search Primer•Quality, Not Quantity Whitepaper•Blog articles

–Discovery Services: Over-Hyped and Under-Performed

–Preparing for ALA Panel and Federated Search Neutrality

–Discovering the need for discovery solutions that also support meta/federated searching (Carl Grant)


Thank you!

Questions?Please email me:

Abe Lederman [email protected]

This Powerpoint is located here:www.deepwebtech.com/ala2011.ppt

Documents

© 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. By Abe Lederman President and CTO June 26, 2011 Understanding Differences Between Federated Search and Discovery Services