[Web4lib] Open Source Federated Searching Software - whatwe would need.

[Danielle Plumer]

David,

My colleague Kevin Marsh is in charge of developing the Library of Texas federated search tool at www.libraryoftexas.org. It uses an older version of Index Data's Keystone Retriever, which Index Data customized for us, and can search both library catalogs and subscription resources. You can contact Kevin at kmarsh at tsl.state.tx.us

We're developing another federated search tool to search across digital repositories, this time using the newer version of Keystone. One of the repositories we're targeting, the Portal to Texas History at UNT (http://texashistory.unt.edu/), is an extensively customized implementation of Keystone. They did the modifications at UNT, which is one of the joys of Open Source! You could ask Mark Phillips at UNT for more details on their implementation: mphillips at library.unt.edu.

We've found Index Data to be very good at supporting open standards. I don't know that I'd consider Keystone as an alternative to DSpace for a true institutional repository, but it's probably on a par with Greenstone and streeprints.org as a digital library option.

Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator
Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax)
dplumer at tsl.state.tx.us

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of David Kane
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 4:42 AM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Open Source Federated Searching Software - whatwe
would need.

<snip>
 Index Data's 'Keystone DLS'
(http://www.indexdata.com/keystone/ ) interests me because it also
claims to be some kind of digital repository.  I like that because we
are considering setting up a digital repository for our institution and
are currently looking into the issues around this.

I wonder does Keystone support the same open standards as do the main
repository packages, d-Spaces and e-Prints (both open source)?  Could
Keystone be used instead of either of these two, providing a meta search
facility and an information portal to boot?

Finally, I have a general question regarding all 3 of these meta search
tools.  Will they search our subscription databases (like science
direct, emerald etc...) because these, in themselves, do have quite
complex search capabilities and they can also require Athens
authentication, or are validated by IP address.  This is important for
us, as we run some distance learning courses from our Institute.

Kind Regards,

David Kane
WIT Libraries
http://library.wit.ie/
++353.51302838