Not All Federated Search Engines

are Created Equal

Abe Lederman, President and CTO Deep Web Technologies, Inc.

Next Generation Library Technologies, May 7, 2008

Who We Are…Founded in 2002

Headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico

20 Employees

Over $2 million in R&D funding

DWT is focused on providing state-of-the-art federated search products and solutions which search, retrieve, aggregate and

analyze content from web-based databases.

Abe Lederman-Background

Earned B.S. and M.S. Computer Science degrees, MIT

Began work in information retrieval in 1988• Co-founded Verity

Developed some of the first web-based applications that searched text-based content, 1994

Pioneered “Deep Web” searching in 1999• Founded Deep Web Technologies, 2002

Some of Deep Web’s Customers Department of Defense

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Intel Corporate Library

National Agricultural Library

Scitopia.org

Stanford University

What is Federated Search?

Federated Search is an application or service that

allows a user to submit a search in parallel to multiple,

distributed information sources and retrieve aggregated, ranked

and de-duped results.

In Other Words…One Search, Many Sources

LibraryCatalogs

Blogs & Wikis

SubscriptionSources

Public Web Sources

E-Books

News

Begin Search

Benefits of Federated Search One-stop access to multiple information

sources• Users don’t need to know where/how to search

• Saves researcher time and money

• Improves utilization of information sources

Consolidated, ranked and de-duped results• Important results are not missed

Information Discovery

Employees oftenasked, “Why can’tthe Intel Librarysite work likeGoogle or Yahoo?”

Federated SearchFederated Searchat the Intel Libraryat the Intel Library

Geothermal Heating

Why Aren’t all Federated Search Engines Equal?

1. Quality of search results

2. User Interface

3. Results Delivery

4. Administrative Console

Quality of Search Results

Thorough connector development

Boolean and Fielded Searching

Number of results retrieved from each source

Relevance Ranking of retrieved data

User Interface

“Intuitive” navigation Rich feature set

Display of results incrementally

Integration with library’s website (supports multiple search pages)

Powerful web 2.0 interface

Results Delivery Aggregated, ranked results

Clustering/grouping of results

Analysis tools such as filters and sorts

Results Export to RSS, Email, Citation manager

Alerts

Administrative Console Enable/disable connectors

Create search boxes and search pages easily

Metrics

Federated search engines have varying strengths and weaknesses. Select the federated search that is

best for your organization.

Bottom Line

Recommendations

for selecting the “best” federated search

engine for your library.

“Basically, anything that results in a more enjoyable search experience, will lead users to spend more time with a particular federated search product and thus derive value from those highly relevant results, assuming they are easy to find. This is where a pleasant and uncluttered layout, intuitive navigation, and a good amount of Ajax to minimize page refreshes combine with highly relevant search results to create the perfect user experience.

From The Federated Search Blogwww.federatedsearchblog.comSponsored by

What Is Important(and what’s not)

Information Discovery

Analysis

Features Time-Saving

Full-Text Access Quality of ResultsIntuitive Interface

Elegant Presentation

RankingInternal Sources

Premium Content Sources

User Satisfaction

Simplify Access

Standards

Clusters – Facets – Visualizations

Metadata

Alerts

Real-Time Search Cost

Administrative Interface

Bringing Federated Search to your Library

Clearly Define Your Organization’s Requirements

Create Evaluation Criteria

Evaluate Vendors

Test-Test-Test

Narrowing Down Your Vendor Choices

Select Vendors to Evaluate

Send Evaluations

Demo Products

Conduct Pilots

Deploy Solution

Vendors

Clearly Define Your Organization’s Requirements

Compile your list of sources to federate• Determine sources to search from each

search page Licensed Product vs. Managed Solution Budget Staff Resources Timelines Determine features important to users

Compile a list of requirements and features a vendor must provide.

Add additional features you would like to have.

Create a vendor checklist.Evaluate responses.

Create Evaluation Criteria

Sample Vendor Checklist:Company Viability

Question VendorResponse

Explain the history of your company

Who currently uses your product?

Please provide three (3) references we may contact.

Sample Vendor Checklist:Architecture and Integration

Question Vendor Response

Is your product compatible with a URL resolver? Proxies?

Can we incorporate an API interface for integrating with internal sources (web services)?

Is your product compatible with existing systems such as an ILS?

What browsers is your product compatible with? (IE6, IE7, Firefox, Safari)

Sample Vendor Checklist:Connectors

Question Vendor Response

What protocols are supported? (HTTP/HTML, Z39.50, XML, SRU/SRW)

Will you support custom connector development?

What is the size of your connector catalog?

How easy is it to add new connectors? Can we do it, or do we need to go through you?

Sample Vendor Checklist:Results Display

Question Vendor Response

Does your product support relevance ranking?

Can your product sort by an element of a result (author, relevance, date, title, source)?

Does your product support highlighting of search terms within a results set?

Does your product de-dupe results? Are the de-duping criteria adjustable?

Vendor Evaluation Demonstrations and Pilots

• Is a pilot necessary?

• How long of a pilot?

• Should we do multiple pilots?

• Conduct focus groups

• Fulfillment of requirements

and features

Do you offer a free pilot evaluation of your software?

Would your pilot be hosted by you, or installed locally?

How long do your pilot evaluations usually last?

What would we need to provide you for a pilot evaluation?

Remember: Federated Search is a long-term commitment to a vendor.

Test-Test-TestScripting your tests

• Test each engine against the same criteria (same queries, same sources)

Break-dancing• How sturdy is the engine?

Vendor Response • How quickly (or slowly) does the vendor

respond to your needs?

The Future of Federated Search

Multi-lingual searching Personal libraries Automated source selection Integration with social networking tools

Deep Web’s Search Gallery

Resources The Federated Search Blog

• www.federatedsearchblog.com

Sample Vendor Checklist• Email me: abe@deepwebtech.com

Federated Search: Solution or

Setback for Online Library Services Edited by Christopher Cox

Thank You!

Abe Ledermanabe@deepwebtech.com