The annual Charleston Conference hosts a variety of appealing activities but before you do anything, please be sure to dig into your conference bag for your free copy of the Charleston Advisor.  Inside you will find a spectacular review of Deep Web Technologies’ Federated Search (xSearch) at the Stanford Library.  This review neatly summarizes the strengths of the application in four different categories: Content, User Interface/Searchability, Pricing and Contract Options.  We can’t tell you the score here – you’ll need to read the article – but we were very pleased to see our composite score (although not surprised!).

We are also pleased to announce that our Partner, Swets, will present Swetswise Searcher, powered by Explorit, at the Vendor Showcase, Table #26.  Abe will be around and will happily demonstrate the power of next-generation federated search.

We hope to see you there!

The cost of the content isn’t the only cost to be considered either. Research scientists are paid on average $84,000 annually. A principal research scientist earns on average $120,000. In organizations that are primarily research driven such as aerospace, semiconductors, chemical manufacturing, law and engineering, time spent in research is time not spent developing a product, improving a process or inventing the next great widget. Research needs to get done, and quickly, without any sacrifice on breadth or depth of research.

Federated search addresses these two cost areas of research while providing a third benefit to organizations. By providing a single point to searching hundreds of sources, researchers can issue a single search request through a simple Google-like interface and get thousands of results sorted by semantically related concepts. Compare this with issuing multiple, individual search requests, then collating the results across multiple applications, de-duping the results and then getting the full text; federated search speeds this process up with every source that a researcher needs. Furthermore federated search decreases the likelihood of missing an important document. By extending the search across multiple sources, you give researchers more time to go in depth into the results. This significantly cuts the time to result for a researcher to begin analysis and to do the real job he or she is paid to do – build that next generation product, improve that process or design that industrial process.

Deep Web Technologies Explorit is used by some of the world’s leading research organizations to speed research. Our corporate customers are world leaders such as Boeing in aerospace, Intel in semiconductors and BASF in chemicals. These organizations have chosen Explorit to provide a competitive advantage in today’s world. Isn’t it time your firm looked at improving it’s bottom line and competitiveness? If you are interested in reducing research time and research costs and improving the effectiveness of your knowledge enterprise, contact Brian Despain, VP of Sales, toll free: 866-388-1407 x235 or visit Deep Web Technology and click on the chat link during business hours.

Deep Web Technologies is proud to have developed the federated search technology behind WorldWideScience. And, with the cooperation of the Microsoft Translation services team, Deep Web Technologies also implemented the multilingual technology. It was a major undertaking but a worthwhile one for the science community, whose members can now greatly expand their reach to scientific papers in languages beyond their own.

Dr. Warnick was invited to deliver a presentation at the 14th session of the United Nations’ Commission on Science and Technology (CSTD). In a post at the OSTI Blog, Dr. Warnick shares the warm reception that WorldWideScience received.

I wish more of my OSTI colleagues could have been in Geneva to share the warm response from the attendees. Several country representatives offered up new sources for WorldWideScience (WWS). Another member of the audience searched mobile WWS for his own name and remarked that he found many of his papers. I received enthusiastic comments, so many that I couldn’t address all of them because of time constraints. Significantly, the Chair of CSTD volunteered to pay the costs of becoming a member of the WorldWideScience Alliance. There was great excitement about the possibilities for its use within the home countries of the attendees and how WWS advances the goals of CSTD.

The paper “Breaking down language barriers through multilingual federated search” co-authored by Abe Lederman (founder and president of Deep Web Technologies), and Dr. Warnick, Brian Hitson, and Lorrie Johnson from OSTI, explains the importance of the gateway:

“WorldWideScience.org (WWS) is a global science gateway developed by the US Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) in partnership with federated search vendor Deep Web Technologies. WWS provides a simultaneous live search of 69 databases from government and government-sanctioned organizations from 66 participating nations. The WWS portal plays a leading role in bringing together the world’s scientists to accelerate the discoveries needed to solve the planet’s most pressing problems. In this paper we present a brief history of the development of WWS and discuss how a new technology, multilingual federated search, greatly increases WWS’ ability to facilitate the advancement of science.”

Deep Web Technologies is delighted to be working with OSTI and other organizations to push the envelope of search technology and to make the world a smaller place.

Sol Lederman wrote:

I recently discovered an article, 5 Reasons Not to Use Google First, that sings my song. The article addresses this question:

Google is fast, clean and returns more results than any other search engine, but does it really find the information students need for quality academic research? The answer is often ‘no’. “While simply typing words into Google will work for many tasks, academic research demands more.” (Searching for and finding new information – tools, strategies and techniques)

The next paragraph gave me a chuckle.

As far back as 2004, James Morris, Dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, coined the term “infobesity,” to describe “the outcome of Google-izing research: a junk-information diet, consisting of overwhelming amounts of low-quality material that is hard to digest and leads to research papers of equally low quality.” (Is Google enough? Comparison of an internet search engine with academic library resources.)

The article continues with its list of five good reasons to not use Google first.

Note that the recommendation isn’t to skip Google altogether. There’s a balance that’s needed to get the best value when performing research. The findings in the “Is Google enough?” article summarizes this point really well:

Google is superior for coverage and accessibility. Library systems are superior for quality of results. Precision is similar for both systems. Good coverage requires use of both, as both have many unique items. Improving the skills of the searcher is likely to give better results from the library systems, but not from Google.

I use Google a lot when I want to search for the answer to a simple question, a tasty recipe, or I want a good laugh (it gets me every time). I also find that using a wide variety of search tools is essential if you’re serious about getting the best possible search results. For all of the individuals out there that understand the need for specialized search engines, this next part will be a gem.

WorldWideScience.org, a premier scientific search engine has received some recent attention.   Walter L. Warnick, Ph.D., Director of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) for the U.S. Department of Energy, demonstrated  WorldWideScience.org in front of multiple observers including those from the scientific community. According to openbiomed.info, “WorldWideScience.org is federated full-text, public, database of scientific and technical research information published from at least 70 cooperative countries”.  With only about 4% duplication with general search engines (that means Google), WorldWideScience.org   provides access to millions of deep web documents using a single, multi-language search query. One user wrote:

I decided to assess the biomedical research coverage by trying to find information on Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and procedures to isolate patients with this infection.  I searched the keyword phrase “MRSA isolation protocol“: 892 documents were located, and when the result was sorted by date, open access resources such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), UK PubMed Central, and LENUS (Irish Health Repository) present very recent research.   In comparison, the SCIRUS database searched for MRSA isolation protocol finds quantitatively more research, but when sorted by date, all of the recent literature identified is available in Science Direct via subscription-only access or for purchase US $ 31.50.

If you haven’t tried out the WorldWideScience, and you like having a mind-blowing amount of relevant information from all over the world at your finger tips, I suggest you give it a spin; you won’t be sorry you did. We understand the need for collecting information that’s not for answering the simple questions, or for cute cats (he is really cute though, check the laugh link above).

Still need convincing? Here is a simple demonstration and a shout-out to whomever made a pretty good video about a search engine, even with the 80′s cartoon-like sounds and “rad” guitar background music, I find it quite entertaining, there’s a special place in my heart for you.

“Science.gov is a gateway to more than 42 scientific databases and 200 million pages of science information with just one query, and is a gateway to more than 2,000 scientific websites from 18 organizations within 14 federal science agencies. These agencies represent 97% of the federal R&D budget. Science.gov is the USA.gov portal to science and the U.S. contribution to WorldWideScience.org. Science.gov is hosted by the Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information, within the Office of Science, and is supported by CENDI, an interagency working group of senior scientific and technical information managers.”

Science.gov received a pretty large upgrade in December, the image search is located under “special collections” and works just like science.gov except the results have thumbnails (www.science.gov/scigovimage/). The search query now quickly pulls back related images from multiple sources into a thumbnail size result. This is one of very few publicly available science image search portals. Cheryl LaGuardia, an industry critic, wrote:

For a free service this works mighty well: my test search for “tornedo” got the reply, “Did you mean “tornado”? with 151 results for the corrected spelling (a test, mind you, or perhaps I’m easing back into work slowly and may have inadvertently misspelled… no matter! The system works!). The resultant images are terrific, compelling enough to send Dorothy pedaling madly down the road away from them on her bicycle, with Toto in tow.

Deep Web Technologies powers the entire website, and we look forward to using this innovation on other projects in the future.

We wanted to let all of our readers know that we will be attending the ALA 2011 Midwinter Meeting, January 7-11. The Midwinter Meeting is in sunny San Diego, CA at the San Diego Convention Center. Our President Abe Lederman said, “We will be meeting with some of our current and potential partners to have an opportunity to  integrate  our organizational mobility, the ALA Midwinter convention is a great way see new and old faces as well as project us into the new year.”

The line-up of benefits include: 200+ discussion groups covering a variety of hot topics, 2000+ committee meetings and events, entrance to the exhibits, including the opening reception, the ALA President’s Program, ALA/ERT/Booklist Author Forum, Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture**, and the Sunrise Speaker Series. Needless to say, we will be quite busy for those days. The partners that we plan to meet with include Basch, Sweats, and two other recent partnerships we will be announcing after the New Year.

If anyone would like a face-to-face meeting, please contact us, we would love to arrange an engagement.

See you there!

**Arthur Curley served as president of the American Library Association in 1994-1995 and was director of the Boston Public Library. He was a champion of the arts and of the library’s role as a center that can transform the community.  The lecture series commemorates his lifelong dedication to the principles of intellectual freedom and free public access to information. Mr. Curley was an ALA member for more than 30 years.

Now that databases are getting larger and more numerous, Deep Web Technologies’ federated search services have opened up parts of  some industries that have been untouched since their beginning, (think libraries without books).

The digital book has been in the background for some time now. Though the Kindle was the first e-book reader to become widely popular, it was not the first e-book reader. The Sony Reader was launched earlier in 2007 (the year the Kindle was introduced) and Motricity sold e-book reader software for Windows Mobile and Palm devices. Source

Librarians are still largely unfazed by this technology, seated comfortably in the midst of  massive bookshelves, quietly, but audibly turning pages. So it’s no wonder that Cushing Academy received a lot of attention when they announced that they will be spending more money on databases and less on physical books; in fact they got rid of nearly all of them. The library has been completely remodeled. Instead of rows and rows of book shelves, patrons are greeted with bigger lounging areas, computer space, and a brand new coffee bar, making for a very welcoming educational environment.

The databases are linked with Deep Web Technologies’ next-generation federated search engine. E-books are included. The students are trained in the search mechanics, introduced to the databases they will need for class, then left to explore on their own.

Deep Web Tech provides a service that will be changing the way we receive information as well as the environment in which we receive it in.

While this trend of less books, but not book-less, has not picked up much momentum (the short list includes, but not limited to, University of California at Merced and Stanford’s engineering library). It certainly has, in the case of Cushing, led to increased library attendance and use of organizational resources. We believe that this industry trend is the beginning of  a world wide standard, although we may find ourselves missing the little things about the look, smell, feel, and the  physical connection we have with our books.

Something to remember: Cushing is a private high school and, as far as we have searched, the first of its kind to make this drastic shift.

Something to think about: Where do you think the future of the library is?  Or even better, do you think you will tell your children or grandchildren about a time that you had to physically search thousands of books by hand to get the one you needed? Would you say you missed it?

Maybe the only question that remains is: What will happen when the power goes out?