Federated Search:
A Discovery Solution
Abe Lederman
President and CTO
Deep Web Technologies
ANKOS 2013 Annual Meeting
April 26, 2013
© 2013 Deep Web Technologies, Inc.
About Deep Web Technologies...
• Founded by Abe Lederman in 2002
– A co-founder of Verity, acquired by Autonomy
– BS & MS Degrees in Computer Science from MIT
– 25 years experience in Information Retrieval
• Over 100 solutions deployed worldwide
• Over $5M in U.S. Government Grants
• Pioneer/trailblazer in federated search
• Swets/DWT – partners since January 2010
© 2013 Deep Web Technologies, Inc.
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A
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The “Google Myth”
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Library vs. Internet
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How Can You Help Users…?
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American Library Association
Annual Conference, New Orleans
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Blog Articles on Discovery
On Thursday afternoon, Nov 4, 2010
I attended the 45 minute face-off
between Serials Solutions’ Summon
and EBSCO’s EDS.
In the brief demonstration part of
the face-off both Summon and EDS
were each given 2 searches to
conduct as a way to show off their
respective products. As opposed to
the Q&A portion of the face-off,
these searches were not given to
Summon and EDS in advance as
evidenced by the fumbling of both
sides. From my perspective, these
demonstrations highlighted the fact
that Discovery Services are not
really any better when compared to
Deep Web Technologies’ Explorit in
terms of the quality of results that
they return to the user.
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What is “Federated Search”?
“A single-search interface to
quickly find relevant, real-time
information from the sources you
select that students, faculty, and
academic staff need for their
research needs.”
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What is a “Discovery Service?”
Discovery Services are capable of
searching quickly and seamlessly
across a wide range of periodically
indexed content provided by
participating publishers and may
include a library’s catalog and other
local content in the index.
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How Federated Search Differs
from a Discovery Service
Discovery Service
Federated Search
Sources
Index
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FS
Engine
Discovery
Engine
Enter Search Term…
Enter Search Term…
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Side-by-Side Comparison
Federated Search
Discovery Service
Real-time search brings back
most recent results.
Indexed search leads to some lag
time for new information. Not
always current!
Searches and links to full text
where available.
Many publishers only provide
metadata so unable to search
full text.
Search any collection regardless
of publisher and includes all of
customer’s subscribed content –
leads to efficient searching.
Search only content the Service is
able to include in its index – lack
of transparency.
Unbiased relevance ranking
system is used.
Impartial weighting of results
is questionable where service is
owned by a major publisher.
© 2013 Deep Web Technologies, Inc.
End of First Segment
© 2013 Deep Web Technologies, Inc.
Questions to Ask of Summon, EDS
and Other Discovery Services
Do you have a comprehensive list of what’s in the index?
Which of my subscription databases are you indexing?
For each database how far back does
your index go?
Are you biasing your results toward
Proquest or EBSCO content?
Is EBSCO content such as Cinahl
available in Summon?
How current is your index for my important subscriptions?
When are you indexing just metadata vs. full text?
Do a thorough comparison of
coverage and results returned
by various discovery solutions.
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Landscape is Not So Clear
• EDS (EBSCO)
– Discovery Service + Federated
Search
• Summon (ProQuest)
– Discovery Service
• Primo (Ex Libris)
– Discovery Service + Federated
Search
• WorldCat Local (OCLC)
– Discovery Service + Federated
Search
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Landscape is Clear with
Searcher’s Discovery Solution
• Search all the sources and only the
sources that you want.
• Sources queried in real-time.
• Full-text searched and returned most of
the time.
• Easily search user-specified subsets of
sources.
• Searcher is vendor neutral.
• Detailed statistics package.
• Transparency in what is searched
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Searcher Everywhere!
©
• Access Searcher from OPAC and library
website
• Add Searcher widget on Department web
pages
• Integrate Searcher with Course
Management Systems
• Access/Integrate Searcher and Mendeley
• Initiate Searcher searches from Library
Guides
• Integrate Searcher and Social Media
(Facebook, Twitter)
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Stanford University xSearch
3252
1. Nanotechnology patents.
Nanotechnology – the science of the very small …
OECD Library
2. Nanotechnology Investment
Nanotechnology Investment…The U.S. Remains the world’s…
ACS Publications
3. Nanotechnology: Small Matters (PDF)
The primary objective of this project was to engage…
Energy Citations Database
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This Guide
This Group
All Guides
SearchWorks
xSearch
Web
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References
• 2011 ALA Presentation: “The Age of
Discovery: Understanding Discovery
Services, Federated Search and Web
Scale.”
• Charleston Advisor review: “Review of
Deep Web Technologies Federated Search
Service”
• NISO: “Promoting Transparency in
Discovery”
• Swets: Taking library back from Google
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Thank you!
Abe Lederman
abe@deepwebtech.com
Tolga Bakkaloglu
tbakkaloglu@tr.swets.com
Presentation located here:
http://www.deepwebtech.com/wpcontent/uploads/ANKOS-SWETS.2013Presentation2.ppt
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