[Web4lib] RE: Federated search products and Full Text/Peer Reviewlimiting

[Julie Blume Nye]

> one of the core weaknesses of 
> federated searching, i.e.- it can't do a better job than (or even as 
> good of a job as) any given database's native interface. Unless the 

Not necessarily true -- if the targets don't support a feature, the
federated search software may be able to implement it on the client side.  

For example,  Fretwell Downing's ZPORTAL limits to peer reviewed journals by
comparing results received from each database against a 'master' list of
peer-reviewed journals.   (The comparison is on ISSN, not journal title.)
This allows the peer reviewed limit to applied to results from many more
databases since most databases include ISSNs in their results, while
relatively few support peer-reviewed limiting at present. 
Either Openly.Informatics' UHF data or Bowker's Ulrich's dataset can be used
as the master list of peer-reviewed journals.  

This is also the approach ZPORTAL has taken for other features that many
targets don't support (or don't support in comparable ways) -- e.g. date
limiting.

---------------------------------------
Julie Blume Nye
Senior Product Designer -- Fretwell-Downing, Inc.
407 River Trace Dr.
Rougemont, NC 27572
Phone: 336-364-2607 Fax: 336-364-4224
E-mail: mailto:julie.nye at fdusa.com 
Website: www.fdusa.com    

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dale Askey [mailto:daskey at ksu.edu] 
> Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 12:53 PM
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: re: [Web4lib] Federated search products and Full 
> Text/Peer Reviewlimiting
> 
> Jonathan,
> 
> I think your question gets at the heart of one of the core 
> weaknesses of 
> federated searching, i.e.- it can't do a better job than (or even as 
> good of a job as) any given database's native interface. Unless the 
> native interface allows limiting to full text or 
> peer-reviewed articles, 
> there's at best dim hope that you could get the former to work, and 
> practically none for the latter. Now I know a few of you 
> highly-skilled 
> programmer types are just looking to prove me wrong, and for a few 
> limited database targets you might succeed, but let's be 
> realistic. With 
> a remotely-hosted service, you're never going to have such 
> control over 
> the search behavior, and with locally-hosted, you'd need some 
> very, very 
> talented folk (read: large budget or blind luck) to get a fed search 
> engine to do this. It may have less to do with the technical aspects, 
> frankly, and more to do with the potpourri of data that the 
> targets return.
> 
> Besides, if you have a good link resolver, why limit to full text 
> results? Just slap a link resolver button on each result, and that 
> problem is largely solved.
> 
> Dale
> 
> 
> 
> quoted message:
> 
> Our library is considering adding a federated search product, 
> and we've
> got a question for those of you now using them.
> 
> In your experience, have Federated Search programs been able 
> to reliably
> limit to Full Text and/or Peer Reviewed articles?  We're especially
> interested in those programs that are hosted remotely rather than
> locally.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dale Askey
> Web Development Librarian
> KSU Libraries
> 118 Hale Library
> Manhattan, KS 66506
> (785) 532-7672
> 
>