Overview of content related to 'search technology'

Editorial Introduction to Issue 47: Keeping What We Know

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne 47.

Perhaps I am not quite so cynical as I suppose when, despite being more than a little aware of the problem confonting us in respect of safeguarding electronic resources, I can nonetheless be shocked by the statistic Eileen Fenton provides us in her article on Preserving Electronic Scholarly Journals: Portico where she reveals the percentage of resources, from impeccable sources, that were no longer retrievable from the original hyperlink a mere 27 months after their appearance.

Search Engines: Where We Were, Are Now, and Will Ever Be

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Phil Bradley takes a look at the development of search engines over the lifetime of Ariadne and points to what we might anticipate in the years to come.

Unfortunately, I was unable to contribute to the decennial issue at the editors' invitation due to a family bereavement, but since it was such a good idea to take a look back at where we were, and then relate it to the present day and beyond, I did not want to miss the opportunity in this issue.

Retrospective on the RDN

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Debra Hiom, in the first of a two-part series on the Resource Discovery Network, looks back at the development of the RDN and its activities to date.

Introduction

This article will describe the history of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) [1], charting the development of subject gateways in the UK since 1993 to the present day. To help set the history of the gateways in the wider context of the resource discovery landscape in the last decade or so, readers are encouraged to refer to Lorcan Dempsey's recent article on the development of digital libraries [2].

QMSearch: A Quality Metrics-aware Search Framework

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Aaron Krowne and Urvashi Gadi present a framework which improves searching in the context of scholarly digital libraries by taking a 'quality metrics-aware' approach.

In this article we present a framework, QMSearch, which improves searching in the context of scholarly digital libraries by taking a 'quality metrics-aware' approach. This means the digital library deployer or end-user can customise how results are presented, including aspects of both ranking and organisation in general, based upon standard metadata attributes and quality indicators derived from the general library information environment.

Metasearch: Building a Shared, Metadata-driven Knowledge Base System

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Terry Reese discusses the creation of a shared knowledge base system within OSU's open-source metasearch development.

Surveying the current metasearch tools landscape, it is somewhat surprising to find so few non-commercial implementations available. This is especially true considering that, as a group, the library community has cultivated a very vibrant open source community over the past ten or so years. One wonders then, why this particular service has been ceded to the world of commercial vendors. One can speculate that the creation and management of a metasearch knowledge base has likely played a large role [1].

Stargate: Exploring Static Repositories for Small Publishers

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

R. John Robertson introduces a project examining the potential benefits of OAI-PMH Static Repositories as a means of enabling small publishers to participate more fully in the information environment.

With the wider deployment of repositories, the Open Archives Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is becoming a common method of supporting interoperability between repositories and services. It provides 'an application-independent interoperability framework based on metadata harvesting' [1]. Nodes in a network using this protocol are 'data providers' or 'service providers'.

Folksonomies: The Fall and Rise of Plain-text Tagging

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Emma Tonkin suggests that rising new ideas are often on their second circuit - and none the worse for that.

Despite the stability of many key technologies underlying today's Internet, venerable workhorses such as TCP/IP and HTTP, the rise of new candidate specifications frequently leads to a sort of collaborative manic depression. Every now and then, a new idea comes along and sparks a wave of interest, the first stage in the Internet hype cycle.

Serving Services in Web 2.0

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Theo van Veen shows with the help of an example, how standardised descriptions of services can help users control the integration of services from different providers.

"I want my browser to recognise information in Web pages and offer me functionality to remix it with relevant information from other services. I want to control which services are offered to me and how they are offered."

The Rustle of Digital Curation: The JISC Annual Conference

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Julie Allinson, Marieke Guy and Maureen Pennock find themselves contemplating e-frameworks, digital curation and repositories at the JISC Annual Conference.

On 14 March 2006 we found ourselves back at the Birmingham International Convention Centre (ICC) for the 2006 JISC Conference. The annual conference [1] is both an opportunity for JISC to platform the variety of activities it funds and for delegates to learn about the full range of JISC's work by participating in seminars, debates, workshops and demonstrations. This report tries to capture the air of the event through a series of session snapshots.

Code4lib 2006

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Jeremy Frumkin and Dan Chudnov report on the inaugural conference of the Code4lib community of programmers, hackers, and techies working in or with libraries and information systems.

Focused as a highly technical event, the inaugural code4lib conference resulted from the combined efforts of the code4lib community, a loosely connected set of programmers, hackers, librarians, and library technologists who pursue technologies related to libraries and information. Over 80 attendees had the opportunity to learn what their peers were pursuing at other institutions, to share projects, hacks, code, and ideas, and to participate in breakout sessions and give lightning talks.

The Second Digital Repositories Programme Meeting

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Julie Allinson and Mahendra Mahey report on a 2-day JISC Digital Repositories Meeting focusing on project clusters working together and other related issues held by JISC in Warwick, UK over 27-28 March 2006.

The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Digital Repositories Programme [1] held its second Programme meeting towards the end of March. Following in the collaborative tradition set by last October's joint Programme meeting with the Digital Preservation and Asset Management Programme [2], this gathering was themed around the cluster groups established by the Digital Repositories Programme [3] and included many guests from other JISC areas of work and beyond.

News and Events

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

Oxford Journals to report on its open access experiments

Oxford Journals is to stage a one-day conference to report new results from its open access experiments.

Conference details:
Monday 5 June
10.30-16.30
76 Portland Place, London, W1B 1NT

Preliminary programme:
Martin Richardson and Claire Saxby, Oxford Journals, Oxford University
Press Oxford Journals and Open Access