Introduction. Members of the millennial generation (born after 1982) have come of age in a society infused with technology and information. It is unclear how they determine the validity of information gathered, or whether or not validity is even a concern. Previous information search models based on mediated searches with different age groups may not adequately describe the search behaviours of this generation.

Here’s the conclusion:

Conclusions. These findings indicate that the search behaviour of millennial generation searchers may be problematic. Existing search models are appropriate; it is the execution of the model by the searcher within the context of the search environment that is at issue.

Beyond telling us what we already know the paper gives insights as to how librarians can help students to become more sophisticated researchers. Areas in which librarians can add value include:

1. Verification of quality of Web information sources
2. A shift of focus from filtering content to first verifying its quality and then filtering
3. Developing an orderly methodology for performing research

The paper might provide insights that search engine developers could someday roll into their offerings targeted at students.

In Nick’s own words:

Well_rested is a Ruby library that takes takes JSON data and it turns it into Ruby objects that you can call methods on and manipulate. It increases the efficiency of manipulating data by supporting http caching.

The code is freely available at Github. Full details are here.

Nick’s code is also included at RubyGems.org.

Our next-generation federated search product, Explorit,  now powers the SwetsWise Searcher module, designed to simplify access to subscription sources with a single, easy-to-use interface.

Swets is the world’s leading subscription services company, serving over 160 countries. Building on more than 105 years of experience, Swets is a true “long tail” powerhouse that provides the most comprehensive and sophisticated e-commerce platform currently available in its field.

Read our press release here.

[ This is a guest article by Sol Lederman, primary author of the Federated Search Blog, which we sponsor. Sol also consults for Deep Web Technologies on a number of projects. ]

In case you’re not a reader of the Federated Search Blog I want to make sure you know about the writing contest that Deep Web Technologies is sponsoring. This is our second year running the contest. Last year’s contest asked readers to predict the future of federated search and to describe that future in an essay of 1500 or fewer words. We enlisted the help of six experts in federated search to judge the submissions. We gave away cash prizes of $500, $250, and $100 and, more importantly, we gave Mr. Rich Turner, the grand prize winner, the opportunity to discuss his ideas at the Computers In Libraries Conference. And, to top it off, Mr. Turner’s essay was published in Computers In Libraries Magazine.

We’re gearing up for our second contest. We don’t have all the details worked out but we have a topic and we know that the prizes will be bigger. We announced the topic recently. I’ll save you a click. Here’s the topic:

We’ll have a new set of judges reviewing this year’s submissions. Last year’s experts were great and we’d like to give others the opportunity to help us out and get some press. If you know of someone we should contact to judge or if you would like to be a judge yourself, read this for details.

We hope you’ll submit an essay, or at least help spread the word. This contest, because of the visibility it provides the winner, can really bring your career to the next level. And, the cash prizes for second and third place winners are nice as well. ]]> http://deepwebtechblog.com/deep-web-technologies-is-sponsoring-our-second-annual-writing-contest/feed/ 0 http://deepwebtechblog.com/coming-in-2010-multilingual-translation/ http://deepwebtechblog.com/coming-in-2010-multilingual-translation/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:34:04 +0000 Darcy Pedersen http://deepwebtechblog.com/?p=329 Our Engineering Department has something nifty brewing that should be ready next year…multilingual translation.  It may not sound that enticing, but the concept of searching databases for new discoveries in different languages is a researcher’s dream!  Using the Google Translation appliance, our multilingual translation feature will allow you to search from your native language, sending out your query to different publishers in different countries with different languages.  Once results are retrieved, our Multilingual Translation feature will translate them back into your chosen language, aggregate the results, de-duplicate, then rank them, using our next-generation federated search software.

The opportunity for global information discovery by integrating this service in to our Explorit Research Accelerator federated search is monumental.  Stay tuned for new developments with this feature.

Here’s our Press Release -

Deep Web Technologies Developing Multilingual Translator for Federated Search

SANTA FE, N.M., Sept. 3, 2009 — Deep Web Technologies is proud to announce development of a prototype of a multilingual translation capability for clients using its federated search applications. An early prototype of multilingual searching was demonstrated to the members of the WorldWideScience Alliance in June of 2009. This new feature, when fully developed and implemented, will translate a user’s search query into the native language of the collections being searched, will translate result titles and snippets back to the user’s original language and aggregate and rank these results according to relevance. The translation process will be seamless, making it simple to search collections in multiple languages from a single search box in the native language of the user.

“I’m very excited about this new multilingual translation capability. It will break down the language barrier for researchers in many countries, promoting global information discovery,” said Abe Lederman, President and CTO of Deep Web Technologies. “This will be particularly helpful in the areas of science, technology, government, and intelligence, where information may lie in hard-to-reach, non-English deep web collections.”

While many countries have a wealth of research content in local collections, much of this information has not been translated to other languages. Deep Web Technologies’ multilingual translation capability will augment the Explorit Research Accelerator(TM) federated search engine, allowing users to search multiple collections from different countries and languages simultaneously. The current prototype provides for searches of collections in English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese where the user selects the language desired for the results, which are aggregated, deduped, ranked and clustered in the selected language.

Deep Web Technologies’ Explorit Research Accelerator(TM) next generation federated search engine is focused on making the deep web accessible to all. It allows for comprehensive searching of many small, often unknown scientific, technical, government and subscription-based collections, as well as popular collections, all at the same time. Explorit displays results in an easy-to-follow, aggregated list, all from a single search request, providing researchers fast, efficient and comprehensive information discovery. Mainstream search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and bing, which rank results on popularity instead of relevance, aren’t as strong for information discovery purposes.

“I foresee this multilingual translation capability as a major tool to speed the discovery process and disseminate critical scientific and technical discoveries, as well as time-sensitive government data,” mentioned Lederman. “Imagine finding relevant thesis and dissertations, journal articles and research reports from Chinese or Russian collections with a single, English-based search query.”

Deep Web Technologies is further improving its multilingual search capability and exploring with a number of our partners implementation of this capability on federated search-based portals such as ScienceResearch.com, WorldWideScience.org and the Defense Technical Information Center’s (DTIC) MultiSearch Portal.