kcenter_search

"Randomly selected undergraduates at Brigham Young University, Brigham Young University-Idaho, and Brigham Young University-Hawaii, all private universities sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, participated in a study that investigated four questions regarding federated searching: (1) Does it save time? (2) Do undergraduates prefer it? (3) Are undergraduates satisfied with the results they get from it? (4) Does it yield higher-quality results than nonfederated searching? Federated searching was, on average, 11 percent faster than nonfederated searching. Undergraduates rated their satisfaction with the citations gathered by federated searching 17 percent higher than their satisfaction using nonfederated search methods. A majority of undergraduates, 70 percent, preferred federated searching to the alternative. This study could not ultimately determine which of the two search methods yielded higher citation quality. The study does shed light on assumptions about federated searching and will interest librarians in different types of academic institutions, given the diversity of the three institutions studied."

"Three hosted federated search tools, Follett One Search, Gale PowerSearch Plus, and WebFeat Express, were configured and implemented in a school library. Databases from five vendors and the OPAC were systematically searched. Federated search results were compared with each other and to the results of the same searches in the database's native interface to disclose differences in handling query syntax, searching, retrieval, browsing results, etc. Each product was easily configured, but none were capable of searching every database desired. Simpler Boolean queries are the most successful queries because of the underlying structure and differences of the databases, and the capabilities of certain products. Federated search products succeed in simplifying access to multiple database resources at school, but searching remains different from the familiar Web search engines in many ways. To become more Google-like, federated searching must be done against indexes built in advance instead of the current real-time searching method."

"(...) Les pages qui suivent, issues d'un travail d'étude mené au SCD de l'IUFM de Lyon 1, veulent tenter d'apporter quelques premiers éclairages aux collègues confrontés à ces questions. Dans ce dessein, ces lignes reviendront d'abord rapidement sur ce qu'est un ENT avant de préciser quelles raisons plaident pour que les bibliothèques s'intègrent dans un ENT. L'importante question organisationnelle sera ensuite évoquée, avant qu'une proposition de phasage n'ouvre des horizons plus concrets."

"Vingt ans après l'observation des usages des catalogues informatisés menée par Joëlle Le Marec à la Bibliothèque publique d'information 1, les administrateurs du portail documentaire actuel, accompagnés par le service Études et recherche, ont souhaité évaluer la réception et la compréhension de cet outil par ses utilisateurs. La méthode des tests scénarisés, très utilisée en ergonomie informatique, a été retenue dans le but de recueillir des données fines concernant les difficultés et points de blocages rencontrés au cours de la consultation. Cette démarche d'évaluation, riche d'enseignement, ouvre à la BPI de nouvelles perspectives en matière de développement et d'évolution de ses interfaces de recherche."

"Le Northern Ireland Science Park vient de décerner le prix de l'année aux chercheurs de l'Université d'Ulster pour le développement de SOPHIA, un outil de recherche réalisé en collaboration avec l'Université de St Petersbourg en Russie. La recherche initiale du projet a été effectuée au Northern Ireland Knowledge Engineering Lab (NIKEL), qui fait partie de la University's School of Computing and Mathematics. Le but de cet outil de recherche est de donner des résultats qui sont fondés sur le sens des mots-clés et non pas sur les mots eux-mêmes. SOPHIA, pour SOPHisticated Information Analysis, analyse et traite chaque document comme s'il était composé de centaines de milliers de documents. Elle structure chaque partie du document en l'associant à un thème. Les documents sont reliés entre eux en se fondant sur des thèmes communs. Les différents thèmes sont détectés automatiquement sans aucune intervention humaine. Avec ce système, la réponse à une requête peut ne contenir aucun des mots clés de la requête mais uniquement des documents sur le même sujet."

"Traditional on-line search services such as Dialog, DataStar and Lexis provide a wide range of search features (boolean and proximity operators, truncation, etc). This paper discusses the use of these features for effective searching, and argues that these features are required, regardless of advances in search engine technology. The literature on on-line searching is reviewed, identifying features that searchers find desirable for effective searching. A selective survey of current digital libraries available on the Web was undertaken, identifying which search features are present. The survey indicates that current digital libraries do not implement a wide range of search features. For instance: under half of the examples included controlled vocabulary, under half had proximity searching, only one enabled browsing of term indexes, and none of the digital libraries enable searchers to refine an initial search. Suggestions are made for enhancing the search effectiveness of digital libraries; for instance, by providing a full range of search operators, enabling browsing of search terms, enhancement of records with controlled vocabulary, enabling the refining of initial searches, etc."

"There are several kinds of conceptual models for information seeking and retrieval (IS&R). The paper suggests that some models are of a summary type and others more analytic. Such models serve different research purposes. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the functions of conceptual models in scientific research, in IS&R research in particular. What kind of models are there and in what ways may they help the investigators? What kinds of models are needed for various purposes? In particular, we are looking for models that provide guidance in setting research questions, and formulation of hypotheses. As a example, the paper discusses [at length] one analytical model of task-based information seeking and its contribution to the development of the research area."

"In this paper we propose a multi-agent Selective Dissemination of Information service to improve the research community's access to digital library resources. The service also provides a new recommendation approach to satisfy researchers' specific information requirements." "Semantic Web technologies and fuzzy linguistic modelling provide the means to develop value-added services for digital libraries, which improve users' access to resources of interest to them. Furthermore, the recommendation approach here proposed allows researchers to satisfy specific information needs not covered by traditional recommender systems."

"The goal of this study is to expand our understanding of the relationships between selected tasks, cognitive abilities and search result interfaces. The underlying objective is to understand how to select search results presentation for tasks and user contexts"

"Pour Marc Van Rymenant, la meilleure façon de ne pas perturber un internaute, c'est de rester dans le chemin de ce qu'il est venu faire. "Le mode d'interaction n'est pas plus important que le contenu", explique-t-il. "Il faut surtout éviter le désengagement de l'internaute". Un bémol tout de même, l'étude a été menée uniquement auprès d'étudiants, souvent extrêmement familiers avec Internet. "Les conclusions de l'étude sont à modérer", explique Marc Van Rymenant. "Il y a un décalage avec la réalité d'Internet"."

"SOPHIA has been designed to address these recognised limitations. SOPHIA is unique in that it addresses the 'search problem' from a linguistic view point as opposed to from a purely mathematical perspective. It is based on an established model of language called Semiotics which describes how we understand and interpret the meaning of signs and texts in context. We don't argue that SOPHIA should replace Boolean search entirely - moreover it is a complementary tool that provides an enriched search experience that enables users to browse, navigate, discover and understand their information in context. SOPHIA has a 3-tier architecture designed for OEM and ease of integration with Development Partners. Contact sales@sophiasearch.com to explore Working Together on a project or application that can be enhanced and developed by a relationship with SOPHIA's semantic search technology."

#1: Semiotics: the power behind SOPHIA Search #2: Why Search by Meaning and in Context? #3: The Power of Thematic Search #4: Document Semantic Neighbourhoods #5: When is Similar actually Similar? #6: SOPHIA's Intelligent Ranking & Filtering #7: Understanding meaning in Documents #8: Search by Example #9: Functionality: Sharing & Intelligent Alerting #10: SOPHIA Architecture

"Perhaps the world's first, we are proud to announce our upcoming Commercial Ontology (CO). What is a commercial ontology? If you asked this question you have just touched on an important distinction: fantasy versus reality. In the context of World Wide Web, the CO is the realistic version of an ontology for the reasons explained below. (...) The immediate use of the CO is related to search queries, or document characterizations, that are not tied to any advertising in conventional systems. This unrecognized domain of search queries and characterizations means loss of revenue. hakia's CO is designed to fill this gap. For example, if the search query or page characterization is "beat generation" the CO can map it to "literature" on the fly. As a result, systems using the CO will have much deeper understanding of the incoming terms, thus will be able to recognize the underlying intent beyond the face value of the words. The same capability can be used in a number of places other than advertising with the same effect. "

"Pour l'université de Rutgers, un internaute réalise plus rapidement et efficacement une recherche si le moteur affiche simultanément une liste de résultats et un nuage mettant en avant les mots-clés présumés."

"un moteur de recherche dont la représentation visuelle diffère totalement de ce que l'on a l'habitude de voir avec un moteur de recherche. Ici, pas de liste ordonnées de liens, pas de nombre de pages de résultats, ni de liens sponsorisés mais une représentation visuelle dans l'espace de l'information demandée. 3 grandes fonctionnalités à noter :\n\n * Explorer les relations entre l'entité recherchée et l'univers qui l'entoure.\n * Retrouver facilement de l'actualités qui justifient les relations affichées à l'écran.\n * Personnaliser l'affichage en changeant le nombre d'informations affichées, classée par type (entreprises, organismes, personnes, villes et mots-clés)."

"The main utility is to provide internal search function within organization's document repository. Options include other vital functions like powering a consumer facing search, providing targeted Web search to the workers inside the corporation, external news monitoring and alerting, harvesting quality content from the Web to enrich organizations' information repository, and categorization of documents for better management."

Feature Highlights : - Leoad Data Easily - Filter and Navigate - Group Data in Tables - Display on the Web * 100% java technology. * A range of different relationship types are supported. Edges can be directed, undirected, and can show flow in both directions. * Text and numerical attributes can be associated with nodes and edges. Tables display the attributes and allow sorting. * Images can be associated with nodes. * Advanced cluster computation reveals inherent groupings. * Co-citations and co-occurrence analysis clarifies dense networks.