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Understanding Differences Between Federated Search and Discovery Services

This article explores the differences between Federated Search and Discovery Services, including the advantages and challenges of each. It also discusses the importance of content neutrality and transparency in these services. Additionally, it provides guidance on when to choose Federated Search and tips for optimizing its effectiveness.

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Understanding Differences Between Federated Search and Discovery Services

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  1. Understanding Differences Between Federated Search and Discovery Services By Abe Lederman President and CTO June 26, 2011

  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 Santa Fe

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

  4. One Search, Many Sources OPACs Blogs Subscription Sources eBooks Wikis Enter Your Search… Begin Search Internal Databases Public Web Sources Journals

  5. Federated Search Has Gotten A Bad Rap • 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)

  6. Federated Search vs. Discovery Services

  7. 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

  8. 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.

  9. 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?

  10. 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

  11. 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?

  12. 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)

  13. 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

  14. 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)

  15. Thank you! Questions? Please email me: Abe Lederman abe@deepwebtech.com This Powerpoint is located here: www.deepwebtech.com/ala2011.ppt

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