Understanding Differences Between Federated Search and Discovery Services

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 Santa Fe • Over $5 M in R&D • Pioneered federated search • Developed high profile applications © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 2

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. © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 3

One Search, Many Sources OPACs Blogs e. Books Enter Your Search… Subscription Sources Begin

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 (metadata differences, lack of info) © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 5

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 © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 6

Landscape is Not So Clear • Summon (Pro. Quest) – Discovery Service • EDS (EBSCO) – Discovery Service + Federated Search • World. Cat 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 © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 7

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. © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 8

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? © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 9

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. -data only © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 10 meta

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? © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 11

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/nonmainstream sources • Your research is specialized (ex. medical/legal) • You have a wide range of subscribed content (ex. EBSCO and Pro. Quest) © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 12

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 © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 13

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) © 2011 Deep Web Technologies, Inc. 19