***apologies for cross posting*** Advanced Search and Discovery Service to Showcase UK Research Output
Institutional repositories make available as much research output of an institution as possible. Technological developments have an impact on search and discovery functionalities employed by search services that access these repositories. Intute Repository Search (www.intute.ac.uk/irs) is a project that was set up to develop a UK repository search service to support academic activity. It is funded by the JISC and led by MIMAS in partnership with SHERPA, UKOLN and NaCTeM and is designed to serve as a showcase for UK research and education. Search services harvest the metadata and full-text out-put from institutional repositories, making the aggregated content searchable and browsable via a single interface. Intute Repository Search currently searches over 95 UK institutional repositories that are taken from the Directory of Open Access Repositories, OpenDOAR. The development path of this project involves simple metadata search, full-text indexing of documents, text-mining of full-text documents, automatic subject classification, term-based document classification, query expansion, clustering of results and browsing/visualisation of the search results. User group requirements have been integrated into the project's development iterations to ensure that the project adequately reflects what researchers want from a service such as Intute Repository Search. Two complementary advanced search and browse services have been developed for user testing. One is Autonomy IDOL (www.autonomy.com/content/Products/products-idol-server/index.en.html) and the other is using components developed by NaCTeM (www.nactem.ac.uk). Autonomy IDOL relates to the conceptual feature of the service. This allows users to search for documents most closely matched to their query, read the overview and abstract of those documents and also have the opportunity to view documents relating to the query's search results. The result is a richer contextual search facility for users who want to view documents that are ranked according to their relation to the query. NaCTeM has developed the text mining component. This allows users to take advantage of the TerMine service (www.nactem.ac.uk/software/termine/) among others, to automatically discover term associations within texts that are harvested from UK HE institutional repositories. By extracting information that would have otherwise been difficult or impossible to identify in a large number of documents, users can view documents that are linked with each other via salient concepts in a way that may lead to the answer of existing research questions or the creation of new ones. This then allows for a more meaningful and personalised search facility for users who are looking for specific patterns and connections between terms, within the collective resource of Intute Repository Search. By supporting high value knowledge communities through advanced search and discovery facilities, Intute Repository Search is a project that endeavours to encourage repository search in routine research activities. This would then lead to showcasing the collective and collaborative UK research output; aiding the Open Access movement as well as enhancing repository development. The project site includes all the search features that have been developed during its lifespan as well as the opportunity to get involved in the discussion forums (www.intute.ac.uk/irs/community/forum). For further information please contact us at www.intute.ac.uk/irs/contactus or alternatively, contact the project director, Vic Lyte at vic.l...@manchester.ac.uk This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses, which could damage your computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.