I don’t usually post just pointers to other blogs, but I’m making an exception here. In the interesting new “Federated Search Blog” (Which I think is from someone who works for a vendor looking to get into the library federated search market?), is a great post that explains what goes into the quality of a federated search product’s search, and what might make one work better than another—in a really accessible and understandable way to the non-tech-geek. This is a topic I’ve had to try to explain to non-technologists before, and one which it’s really good for non-technologist library workers who are using and training users in this technology every day to understand. From now on, I’ll point them to this essay.
Category: Metasearch
Local indexing of scholarly articles
Richard Wallis of Talis posts on a project that impacts our fantasies of local indexing (rather than cross-search) for scholarly articles.
“By embedding Onix encoded journal article information in to a RSS 2.0 feed it was possible to build a process, capable of being automated, for those articles to be inserted in to a library catalogue without human intervention.”
http://blogs.talis.com/panlibus/archives/2007/02/tocross.php