[CODE4LIB] Vacancy at the University of York - Digital Library Systems Developer

2009-04-21 Thread Julie Allinson

Dear all,

We are currently advertising for a Digital Library Systems Developer at the 
University of York to work on our latest JISC enhancement project 'YODL-ING'.

The post is fixed-term for 18 months.

Further details here: 
https://www22.i-grasp.com/fe/tpl_YorkUni01.asp?newms=jjid=24975


Closing date Wednesday 13 May, interviews scheduled for 4 June.

There's more information about York Digital Library (YODL) on our web site, or just get in touch with any questions: 
http://www.york.ac.uk/library/electroniclibrary/yorkdigitallibraryyodl/


Best,

Julie

--
Julie Allinson  ja...@york.ac.uk
Digital Library Manager
University Library  Archives, J.B. Morrell Library
University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, UK
tel: ++44 (0) 1904 434083 skype: j.allinson
web: http://www.york.ac.uk/services/library/elibrary/digitallibrary.htm
--


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Yitzchak Schaffer

Andrew Nagy wrote:

Summon is really more than an NGC as we are selling it as a service - a
unified discovery service.  This means that it is a single repository of the
library's content ( subscription content, catalog records, IR data, etc.).
Federated search is not apart of Summon


Well, if we understand federated to mean bringing stuff together by 
searching all of it at once, then it is, as opposed to broadcast 
searching, a term you used later in this sentence.  As in, Origin:
1665–75;  L foederātus leagued together, allied, equiv. to foeder- 
(nom. s. foedus) league from

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=federated

It is, though, a great *breakthrough* in the area of federated search, 
which is why we ordered an onsite demo immediately on hearing about this 
product.


But I don't think I was clear with my question in any case; it occurs to 
me now that my true question wasn't code-related, but seeing Summon on 
the conf agenda prompted me to bring it up here.  Namely: has anyone 
investigated whether the arrangements SerSol has with content vendors 
are easily duplicable by institutions for home-baked/potential OSS products


--
Yitzchak Schaffer
Systems Manager
Touro College Libraries
33 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10010
Tel (212) 463-0400 x5230
Fax (212) 627-3197
Email yitzc...@touro.edu
Twitter /torahsyslib


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Mike Taylor
I, and most of the people I've worked with, have been using the terms
metasearch, federated search, broadcast search and distributed
search synonymously for years.  Have they now settled down into
having distinct meanings?  If anyone could summarise, I'd be grateful.

 _/|____
/o ) \/  Mike Taylorm...@indexdata.comhttp://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  Sorry if my English didn't good enough to well explain my idea
 -- Ronachai Pratanaphon.



Yitzchak Schaffer writes:
  Andrew Nagy wrote:
   Summon is really more than an NGC as we are selling it as a service - a
   unified discovery service.  This means that it is a single repository of 
   the
   library's content ( subscription content, catalog records, IR data, etc.).
   Federated search is not apart of Summon
  
  Well, if we understand federated to mean bringing stuff together by 
  searching all of it at once, then it is, as opposed to broadcast 
  searching, a term you used later in this sentence.  As in, Origin:
  1665?75;  L foeder?tus leagued together, allied, equiv. to foeder- 
  (nom. s. foedus) league from
  http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=federated
  
  It is, though, a great *breakthrough* in the area of federated search, 
  which is why we ordered an onsite demo immediately on hearing about this 
  product.
  
  But I don't think I was clear with my question in any case; it occurs to 
  me now that my true question wasn't code-related, but seeing Summon on 
  the conf agenda prompted me to bring it up here.  Namely: has anyone 
  investigated whether the arrangements SerSol has with content vendors 
  are easily duplicable by institutions for home-baked/potential OSS products
  
  -- 
  Yitzchak Schaffer
  Systems Manager
  Touro College Libraries
  33 West 23rd Street
  New York, NY 10010
  Tel (212) 463-0400 x5230
  Fax (212) 627-3197
  Email yitzc...@touro.edu
  Twitter /torahsyslib


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Dr R. Sanderson

Sorry, but, me too!

Rob

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Mike Taylor wrote:


I, and most of the people I've worked with, have been using the terms
metasearch, federated search, broadcast search and distributed
search synonymously for years.  Have they now settled down into
having distinct meanings?  If anyone could summarise, I'd be grateful.

_/|_ ___
/o ) \/  Mike Taylorm...@indexdata.comhttp://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  Sorry if my English didn't good enough to well explain my idea
 -- Ronachai Pratanaphon.



Yitzchak Schaffer writes:
 Andrew Nagy wrote:
  Summon is really more than an NGC as we are selling it as a service - a
  unified discovery service.  This means that it is a single repository of the
  library's content ( subscription content, catalog records, IR data, etc.).
  Federated search is not apart of Summon

 Well, if we understand federated to mean bringing stuff together by
 searching all of it at once, then it is, as opposed to broadcast
 searching, a term you used later in this sentence.  As in, Origin:
 1665?75;  L foeder?tus leagued together, allied, equiv. to foeder-
 (nom. s. foedus) league from
 http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=federated

 It is, though, a great *breakthrough* in the area of federated search,
 which is why we ordered an onsite demo immediately on hearing about this
 product.

 But I don't think I was clear with my question in any case; it occurs to
 me now that my true question wasn't code-related, but seeing Summon on
 the conf agenda prompted me to bring it up here.  Namely: has anyone
 investigated whether the arrangements SerSol has with content vendors
 are easily duplicable by institutions for home-baked/potential OSS products

 --
 Yitzchak Schaffer
 Systems Manager
 Touro College Libraries
 33 West 23rd Street
 New York, NY 10010
 Tel (212) 463-0400 x5230
 Fax (212) 627-3197
 Email yitzc...@touro.edu
 Twitter /torahsyslib



Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Eric Lease Morgan

On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:40 AM, Mike Taylor wrote:


I, and most of the people I've worked with, have been using the terms
metasearch, federated search, broadcast search and distributed
search synonymously for years.  Have they now settled down into
having distinct meanings?  If anyone could summarise, I'd be grateful.




Yes, to me, the quoted phases above are synonymous.

But I believe we are also seeing a new type of index manifesting  
itself, and this new index has yet to be named. Specifically, I'm  
thinking of the index where various types of content is aggregated  
into a single index and then queried. For example, instead of  
providing a federated search against one or more library catalogs, a  
Z39.50 accessible journal article index, a local cache of harvested  
OAI content, etc., I think we are beginning to see all of these  
content silos (and others) brought together into a single (Solr/ 
Lucene) index and searched simultaneously. I'm not sure, but I think  
this is how Summon works.


--
Eric Lease Morgan
Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Jonathan Rochkind
Both the terms federated searching and meta-searching are often used 
ambiguously to refer to both of these techniques.


I've been trying to use broadcast search and local index to be clear 
about which technique I'm talking about. (I used to say 'cross-search' 
for 'broadcast search', but I think 'broadcast search' is more clear).


Jonathan

Yitzchak Schaffer wrote:

Andrew Nagy wrote:
  

Summon is really more than an NGC as we are selling it as a service - a
unified discovery service.  This means that it is a single repository of the
library's content ( subscription content, catalog records, IR data, etc.).
Federated search is not apart of Summon



Well, if we understand federated to mean bringing stuff together by 
searching all of it at once, then it is, as opposed to broadcast 
searching, a term you used later in this sentence.  As in, Origin:
1665–75;  L foederātus leagued together, allied, equiv. to foeder- 
(nom. s. foedus) league from

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=federated

It is, though, a great *breakthrough* in the area of federated search, 
which is why we ordered an onsite demo immediately on hearing about this 
product.


But I don't think I was clear with my question in any case; it occurs to 
me now that my true question wasn't code-related, but seeing Summon on 
the conf agenda prompted me to bring it up here.  Namely: has anyone 
investigated whether the arrangements SerSol has with content vendors 
are easily duplicable by institutions for home-baked/potential OSS products


  


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Karen Schneider
 But I don't think I was clear with my question in any case; it occurs to me
 now that my true question wasn't code-related, but seeing Summon on the conf
 agenda prompted me to bring it up here.  Namely: has anyone investigated
 whether the arrangements SerSol has with content vendors are easily
 duplicable by institutions for home-baked/potential OSS products


It's a relationship, so anything is possible. But easily? That would
depend on who was doing it.

I also agree that federated search doesn't suit Summon well. The
natively-indexed content is key.

-- 
-- 
| Karen G. Schneider
| Community Librarian
| Equinox Software Inc. The Evergreen Experts
| Toll-free: 1.877.Open.ILS (1.877.673.6457) x712
| k...@esilibrary.com
| Web: http://www.esilibrary.com
| Be a part of the Evergreen International Conference, May 20-22, 2009!
| http://www.lyrasis.org/evergreen


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Dr R. Sanderson

Eric,

How is this 'new type' of index any different from an index of OAI-PMH 
harvested material?  Which in turn is no different from any other local 
search, just a different method of ingesting the data?


Sounds like good PR to me, rather than a revolution ;)

Rob

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:

On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:40 AM, Mike Taylor wrote:

I, and most of the people I've worked with, have been using the terms
metasearch, federated search, broadcast search and distributed
search synonymously for years.  Have they now settled down into



But I believe we are also seeing a new type of index manifesting
itself, and this new index has yet to be named. Specifically, I'm
thinking of the index where various types of content is aggregated
into a single index and then queried. For example, instead of
providing a federated search against one or more library catalogs, a
Z39.50 accessible journal article index, a local cache of harvested
OAI content, etc., I think we are beginning to see all of these
content silos (and others) brought together into a single (Solr/
Lucene) index and searched simultaneously. I'm not sure, but I think
this is how Summon works.


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Mike Taylor
Eric Lease Morgan writes:
  On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:40 AM, Mike Taylor wrote:
  
   I, and most of the people I've worked with, have been using the terms
   metasearch, federated search, broadcast search and distributed
   search synonymously for years.  Have they now settled down into
   having distinct meanings?  If anyone could summarise, I'd be grateful.
  
  
  
  Yes, to me, the quoted phases above are synonymous.
  
  But I believe we are also seeing a new type of index manifesting  
  itself, and this new index has yet to be named. Specifically, I'm  
  thinking of the index where various types of content is aggregated  
  into a single index and then queried. For example, instead of  
  providing a federated search against one or more library catalogs, a  
  Z39.50 accessible journal article index, a local cache of harvested  
  OAI content, etc., I think we are beginning to see all of these  
  content silos (and others) brought together into a single (Solr/ 
  Lucene) index and searched simultaneously.

Ah yes.  You won't be surprised to hear that we are doing the same
thing with Zebra.  For this, we use the less than exciting term local
indexes.

 _/|____
/o ) \/  Mike Taylorm...@indexdata.comhttp://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  I have an ugly tendency to blame all my failings on others.
 It's something I picked up from my parents -- Matt Wedel.


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Jonathan Rochkind

Karen Schneider wrote:

But I don't think I was clear with my question in any case; it occurs to me
now that my true question wasn't code-related, but seeing Summon on the conf
agenda prompted me to bring it up here.  Namely: has anyone investigated
whether the arrangements SerSol has with content vendors are easily
duplicable by institutions for home-baked/potential OSS products



It's a relationship, so anything is possible. But easily? That would
depend on who was doing it.
  


I think in point of fact SerialSolution is doing a LOT of work to keep 
the feeds from the vendors flowing, keep the data updated, deal with 
errors, normalize it to some extent so it can all live in an index 
together.


It's good SerialSolutions has set the precedent, so it may be possible 
for other entities to duplicate those relationships. (I am VERY curious 
about whether SerSol is paying publishers for metadata or getting it for 
free).  But unless you are a large consortium, I think it's going to be 
more cost effective to pay SerSol (or another vendor) to wrangle all 
that metadata, than to try and do it yourself.


It _would_ be great if SerSol would actually give you (if you were 
subscribed) a feed of their harvested and normalized metadata, so you 
could still pay them to collect and normalize it, but then use it for 
your own purposes outside of Summon. I hope SerSol will consider this 
down the line, if Summon is succesful.


Jonathan


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Eric Lease Morgan

On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:55 AM, Dr R. Sanderson wrote:


How is this 'new type' of index any different from an index of OAI-PMH
harvested material?  Which in turn is no different from any other  
local

search, just a different method of ingesting the data?




This new type of index is not any different in functionality from a  
well-implemented OAI service provider with the exception of the type  
of content it contains.


While OAI is/was popular, it was never really embraced by the  
commercial journal article indexers (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts,  
Web of Science, etc.) nor the commercial journal article publishers  
(Springer, Elsevier, etc.). Consequently their scholarly and in high  
demand content was not indexable. I think, but I'm not sure, Serials  
Solutions has made deals with such publishers to aggregate their  
content into a single whole and provide a more unified search  
interface it. We can see similar things in regards to OCLC and WorldCat.


Maybe these new indexes could be called mega indexes against  
traditional library content. Personally, such a thing is part of what  
I have been advocating as the content of next generation library  
catalogs. [1]


[1] http://www.library.nd.edu/daiad/morgan/musings/ngc-in-15-minutes/

--
Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dame


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Frumkin, Jeremy
Well, I'm pretty sure we haven't settled at all on the terminology, but
here's how I use the terms:

Federated Search - I use this to mean a search where the query is sent
against a number of disparate resources; it doesn't matter if they are
local or not.

I don't use broadcast or distributed search as terms at all.

With LibraryFind, we generally describe it as a cross-collection
discovery tool; I like this description because it differentiates
between a broad discovery (i.e. across collections) approach and a
focused discovery (i.e. deeply within a collection) approach, which is a
useful distinction both from a systems side and from a user side.

Ok, I'm sure that now just added more complexity to things. 

-- jaf

==
Jeremy Frumkin
Assistant Dean / Chief Technology Strategist
University of Arizona Libraries

frumk...@u.library.arizona.edu
+1 520.307.4548
==

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of
Mike Taylor
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 7:41 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

I, and most of the people I've worked with, have been using the terms
metasearch, federated search, broadcast search and distributed
search synonymously for years.  Have they now settled down into
having distinct meanings?  If anyone could summarise, I'd be grateful.

 _/|_
___
/o ) \/  Mike Taylorm...@indexdata.com
http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  Sorry if my English didn't good enough to well explain my
idea
 -- Ronachai Pratanaphon.



Yitzchak Schaffer writes:
  Andrew Nagy wrote:
   Summon is really more than an NGC as we are selling it as a service
- a
   unified discovery service.  This means that it is a single
repository of the
   library's content ( subscription content, catalog records, IR data,
etc.).
   Federated search is not apart of Summon
  
  Well, if we understand federated to mean bringing stuff together
by 
  searching all of it at once, then it is, as opposed to broadcast 
  searching, a term you used later in this sentence.  As in, Origin:
  1665?75;  L foeder?tus leagued together, allied, equiv. to foeder- 
  (nom. s. foedus) league from
  http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=federated
  
  It is, though, a great *breakthrough* in the area of federated
search, 
  which is why we ordered an onsite demo immediately on hearing about
this 
  product.
  
  But I don't think I was clear with my question in any case; it occurs
to 
  me now that my true question wasn't code-related, but seeing Summon
on 
  the conf agenda prompted me to bring it up here.  Namely: has anyone 
  investigated whether the arrangements SerSol has with content vendors

  are easily duplicable by institutions for home-baked/potential OSS
products
  
  -- 
  Yitzchak Schaffer
  Systems Manager
  Touro College Libraries
  33 West 23rd Street
  New York, NY 10010
  Tel (212) 463-0400 x5230
  Fax (212) 627-3197
  Email yitzc...@touro.edu
  Twitter /torahsyslib


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Dr R. Sanderson

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:

On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:55 AM, Dr R. Sanderson wrote:

How is this 'new type' of index any different from an index of OAI-PMH
harvested material?  Which in turn is no different from any other
local search, just a different method of ingesting the data?



This new type of index is not any different in functionality from a
well-implemented OAI service provider with the exception of the type
of content it contains.


Not even the type of content, just the source of the content.
Eg SS have come to an agreement with the publishers to use their 
content, and they've stuffed it all in one big index with a nice 
interface.


NTSH, Move Along...

Rob


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Thomas Dowling
On 04/21/2009 10:40 AM, Mike Taylor wrote:
 I, and most of the people I've worked with, have been using the terms
 metasearch, federated search, broadcast search and distributed
 search synonymously for years.  Have they now settled down into
 having distinct meanings?  If anyone could summarise, I'd be grateful.


We've occasionally tried to disambiguate those terms for some purposes around
here and realized that, if most people use them synonymously, they're synonyms.
 You can define differences between meta-, federated, and broadcast search, but
every discussion on the topic will be punctuated by people asking, Wait,
what's the difference again?

We've started using unified index or local index for stuff we get in
advance, load here, and search in place; and good old metasearch for stuff
scattered in umpteen different locations to which we send searches on demand
and collate results.


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowl...@ohiolink.edu


[CODE4LIB] CALL FOR TUTORIAL PROPOSALS: DC-2009 Conference

2009-04-21 Thread Myung-Ja Han
Dear all,

Apologies for cross-posting.


Dublin Core-2009 Conference invites proposals for the Tutorial to be held in
Seoul, Korea from 12 to 16 October 2009. We wish to include both
Introductory and Advanced tutorials in the program, and would welcome
proposals in both categories as described below.



Thank you,
mj



---

*Introductory Tutorials*



A half-day introductory tutorial stream is envisaged for the Monday before
the main conference

(12 October 2009). It is expected that this will be comprised of two
sessions of two hours. The

purpose of this stream is to give new participants a thorough grounding in
the Dublin Core

Metadata Initiative. In particular, the tutorials should cover:

• the development and focus of DCMI

• the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set

• the Dublin Core Abstract Model, its role and key concepts

• the Singapore Framework, and the development and use of Dublin Core
Application



---

*Profiles*



Support for attendance will be provided to presenters of introductory
tutorials. Proposals are

invited from individuals, indicating the topics they would cover, relevant
experience, and the

learning approach. Joint proposals covering the all the desired material are
particularly

encouraged.



---

*Advanced Tutorials*



DC-2009 will focus on linked data and the enabling of the Semantic Web.
Conference

participants will explore the conceptual and practical issues in breaking
the constraints of data

silos and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge. Proposals
for advanced

tutorials are invited that would explore practice issues related to this
theme. It is envisaged that

advanced tutorials would be offered twice, on the Monday (12 October 2009)
and Friday (16

October 2009), and proposals for both half and full day tutorials are
welcome. No direct support

will be provided to advanced tutorial presenters, but revenue will be split
between the

Conference and the presenters. (Registration for half day tutorials will be
US$100, for full day

tutorials US$200).



---

*Submission and selection process*



The language for all tutorials will be English. Proposals should be
submitted by 15 May 2009 to

the Tutorial Chairs, John Roberts (john.robe...@archives.govt.nz) and Heesop
Kim

(hee...@mail.knu.ac.kr). Please feel free to contact us with any queries
regarding this call.

Successful proposals will be advised by 22 June 2009, in line with
notification of paper

acceptance for the main conference. It is expected that tutorial presenters
will provide handout

materials by 11 September 2009 in time for copying and inclusion in
conference material for

delegates. Authors of tutorial materials need to agree to grant DCMI a
perpetual, non-exclusive

licence to use, copy and distribute the material and/or create adaptations
or derivatives from the

material in any medium for any purpose and without fee or royalty.



---



*The full Call for Proposals - DC 2009 Conference Tutorials is available at:
*



http://dublincore.org/workshops/dc2009/dc-2009-cftut.shtmhttp://dublincore.org/workshops/dc2009/dc-2009-cftut.shtml



---


Myung-Ja MJ Han
Metadata Librarian
220 Main Library
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
1408 W. Gregory Dr. (MC-522)
Urbana, IL 61801
217-333-9515 (Main Library)
217-244-7809 (Grainger)


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress

From: Thomas Dowling tdowl...@ohiolink.edu
You can define differences between meta-, federated, and broadcast search, 
but

every discussion on the topic will be punctuated by people asking, Wait,
what's the difference again?


Leaving aside metasearch and broadcast search (terms invented more recently) 
it  is a shame if federated has really lost its distinction 
fromdistributed.  Historically, a federated database is one that 
integrates multiple (autonomous) databases so it is in effect a virtual 
distributed database, though a single database.I don't think that's a 
hard concept and I don't think it is a trivial distinction.


--Ray 


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Walker, David
Even though Summon is marketed as a Serial Solutions system, I tend to think of 
it more as coming from Proquest (the parent company, of course).

Summon goes a bit beyond what Proquest and CSA have done in the past, loading 
outside publisher data, your local catalog records, and some other nice data 
(no small thing, mind you).  But, like Rob and Mike, I tend to see this as an 
evolutionary step for a database aggregator like Proquest rather than a 
revolutionary one.

Obviously, database aggregators like Proquest, OCLC, and Ebsco are well 
positioned to do this kind of work.  The problem, though, is that they are also 
competitors.  At some point, if you want to have a truly unified local index of 
_all_ of your database, you're going to have to cross aggregator lines.  What 
happens then?

--Dave

==
David Walker
Library Web Services Manager
California State University
http://xerxes.calstate.edu

From: Code for Libraries [code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Dr R. 
Sanderson [azar...@liverpool.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 8:14 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
 On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:55 AM, Dr R. Sanderson wrote:
 How is this 'new type' of index any different from an index of OAI-PMH
 harvested material?  Which in turn is no different from any other
 local search, just a different method of ingesting the data?

 This new type of index is not any different in functionality from a
 well-implemented OAI service provider with the exception of the type
 of content it contains.

Not even the type of content, just the source of the content.
Eg SS have come to an agreement with the publishers to use their
content, and they've stuffed it all in one big index with a nice
interface.

NTSH, Move Along...

Rob


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Walker, David
I've noticed that reference and instructional librarians (at least in published 
literature) tend to use the term federated search more often than others.  
And by that they mean a broadcast search, not what Ray and many others mean by 
that term.  

Library technology folk tend to use the other terms more often.

--Dave

==
David Walker
Library Web Services Manager
California State University
http://xerxes.calstate.edu

From: Code for Libraries [code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Ray Denenberg, 
Library of Congress [r...@loc.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 8:28 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

From: Thomas Dowling tdowl...@ohiolink.edu
 You can define differences between meta-, federated, and broadcast search,
 but
 every discussion on the topic will be punctuated by people asking, Wait,
 what's the difference again?

Leaving aside metasearch and broadcast search (terms invented more recently)
it  is a shame if federated has really lost its distinction
fromdistributed.  Historically, a federated database is one that
integrates multiple (autonomous) databases so it is in effect a virtual
distributed database, though a single database.I don't think that's a
hard concept and I don't think it is a trivial distinction.

--Ray


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Mike Taylor
Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress writes:
  From: Thomas Dowling tdowl...@ohiolink.edu
   You can define differences between meta-, federated, and
   broadcast search, but every discussion on the topic will be
   punctuated by people asking, Wait, what's the difference again?
  
  Leaving aside metasearch and broadcast search (terms invented more
  recently) it is a shame if federated has really lost its
  distinction fromdistributed.  Historically, a federated database
  is one that integrates multiple (autonomous) databases so it is in
  effect a virtual distributed database, though a single database.  I
  don't think that's a hard concept and I don't think it is a trivial
  distinction.

Either it IS a hard concept, or you didn't describe it properly --
because I still don't get exactly what is going on here.  Are you
using federated to mean which Thomas and I (independently) are
calling local indexes?

 _/|____
/o ) \/  Mike Taylorm...@indexdata.comhttp://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  ... about as similar as two completely dissimilar things in a
 pod -- Black Adder.


[CODE4LIB] Code4libNYC Upcoming Meeting - April 22

2009-04-21 Thread Mark A. Matienzo
-- Forwarded message --
From: Kevin Reiss kevin.re...@gmail.com
Date: Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 2:16 PM
Subject: [code4libnycsig-l] Upcoming Meeting - April 22
To: code4libnycsig-l code4libnycsi...@list.metro.org


Hi List Members,
The code4libnyc SIG will hold our next meeting on Wednesday, April
22nd between 10:00 a.m. and 12 noon at the METRO offices at 57 E. 11th
Street in Manhattan near Union Square. We plan to have a roundtable
discussion and some short, informal presentations from SIG members. We
will be discussing the recent Code4lib National Conference that took
place in late February in Providence, Rhode Island
[http://code4lib.org/conference/2009/].  One of the development team
members for Omeka Project  [http://omeka.org/] , Jeremy Boggs, also
plans to join us for the discussion giving members an opportunity to
ask questions and find out what the future has in store that emerging
piece of open source web publishing software aimed at Museums,
Libraries, and Archives.
Please send a brief RSVP note to myself at kevin.re...@gmail.com if
you know you will be attending so we can provide METRO with an
estimate of how many attendees to expect. Walk-ins are also welcome so
if you decide at the last minute you can get away from work and want
to drop by please do not hesitate. If there is something you know
you'd like to present or discuss with the group ahead of time also
please let me know so we have an idea how to best structure our time
on the 22nd.
Regards,
Kevin Reiss
Co-moderator, code4libnyc METRO SIG
http://www.metro.org/collaborate/index.php/Code4libNYC


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Jonathan Rochkind

Thomas Dowling wrote:
We've occasionally tried to disambiguate those terms for some purposes 
around

here and realized that, if most people use them synonymously, they're synonyms.
 You can define differences between meta-, federated, and broadcast search, but
every discussion on the topic will be punctuated by people asking, Wait,
what's the difference again?
  


That's why I like broadcast search though.  Broadcast is very hard 
to use to mean a local index, and once explained once will probably 
stick.  'Broadcast' inherently means 'going out' to do your search, 
right?  Similarly, local index.


I avoid using federated or meta to refer to one of these techniques 
specifically, because they are subject to so much confusion. But since 
these techniques are different in some crucial ways, we DO need ways to 
talk about them. I suggest broadcast search and local index (or 
local meta-index). 


Jonathan


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Jonathan Rochkind

Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress wrote:


Leaving aside metasearch and broadcast search (terms invented more recently) 
it  is a shame if federated has really lost its distinction 
fromdistributed.  Historically, a federated database is one that 
integrates multiple (autonomous) databases so it is in effect a virtual 
distributed database, though a single database.I don't think that's a 
hard concept and I don't think it is a trivial distinction.
  


For at least 10 years vendors in the library market have been selling us 
products called federated search which are in fact 
distributed/broadcast search products.


If you want to reclaim the term federated to mean a local index, I 
think you have a losing battle in front of you.


So I'm sticking with broadcast search and local index.  Sometimes 
you need to use terms invented more recently when the older terms have 
been used ambiguously or contradictorily.  To me, understanding the two 
different techniques and their differences is more important than the 
terminology -- it's just important that the terminology be understood.


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Carl Grant
There was some discussion along these lines over on the  
FederatedSearchBlog, which if you didn't see you might want to peruse...


http://federatedsearchblog.com/2009/03/19/beyond-federated-search/

http://federatedsearchblog.com/2009/03/20/beyond-federated-search-the-conversation-continues/

http://federatedsearchblog.com/2009/03/30/beyond-federated-search-%E2%80%93-winning-the-battle-and-losing-the-war/


Carl

Carl Grant
President
Ex Libris North America
1350 E Touhy Avenue, Suite 200 E
Des Plaines, IL 60018
T: 847-227-2615 (Toll Free: 800-762-6300)
F: 847-296-5636
M: 540-449-2418
W: www.exlibrisgroup.com
E: carl.gr...@exlibrisgroup.com
Skype: carl_grant



On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:33 AM, Walker, David wrote:

Even though Summon is marketed as a Serial Solutions system, I tend  
to think of it more as coming from Proquest (the parent company, of  
course).


Summon goes a bit beyond what Proquest and CSA have done in the  
past, loading outside publisher data, your local catalog records,  
and some other nice data (no small thing, mind you).  But, like Rob  
and Mike, I tend to see this as an evolutionary step for a database  
aggregator like Proquest rather than a revolutionary one.


Obviously, database aggregators like Proquest, OCLC, and Ebsco are  
well positioned to do this kind of work.  The problem, though, is  
that they are also competitors.  At some point, if you want to have  
a truly unified local index of _all_ of your database, you're going  
to have to cross aggregator lines.  What happens then?


--Dave

==
David Walker
Library Web Services Manager
California State University
http://xerxes.calstate.edu

From: Code for Libraries [code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Dr  
R. Sanderson [azar...@liverpool.ac.uk]

Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 8:14 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:

On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:55 AM, Dr R. Sanderson wrote:
How is this 'new type' of index any different from an index of OAI- 
PMH

harvested material?  Which in turn is no different from any other
local search, just a different method of ingesting the data?



This new type of index is not any different in functionality from a
well-implemented OAI service provider with the exception of the type
of content it contains.


Not even the type of content, just the source of the content.
Eg SS have come to an agreement with the publishers to use their
content, and they've stuffed it all in one big index with a nice
interface.

NTSH, Move Along...

Rob


[CODE4LIB] What do we call it? (was: Serials Solutions Summon)

2009-04-21 Thread Joe Hourcle

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:


On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:40 AM, Mike Taylor wrote:


I, and most of the people I've worked with, have been using the terms
metasearch, federated search, broadcast search and distributed
search synonymously for years.  Have they now settled down into
having distinct meanings?  If anyone could summarise, I'd be grateful.




Yes, to me, the quoted phases above are synonymous.

But I believe we are also seeing a new type of index manifesting itself, and 
this new index has yet to be named. Specifically, I'm thinking of the index 
where various types of content is aggregated into a single index and then 
queried.


[trimmed]

Wouldn't this just a union catalog?

Now, you might want to differentiate between what's being joined -- 
multiple types of content all at one location vs. the same type of content 
at multiple locations.  (or both varying).  I don't think any of the terms 
mentioned really show that distinction, however.


We normally use 'heterogeneous' in the science to refer to more than one 
type of data object, but it's really superflous in our field, as there are 
very few forms of federated search where you'd have two repositories of 
similar data -- maybe for browse objects (movies, pre-rendered images), 
but those are typically viewed as supplementary metadata, and not the 
object of primary importance.




-
Joe Hourcle
Principal Software Engineer
Solar Data Analysis Center
Goddard Space Flight Center


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Peter Noerr
From one of the Federated Search vendor's perspective... 

It seems in the broader web world we in the library world have lost 
metasearch. That has become the province of those systems (mamma, dogpile, 
etc.) which search the big web search engines (G,Y,M, etc.) primarily for 
shoppers and travelers (kayak, mobissimo, etc.) and so on. One of the original 
differences between these engines and the library/information world ones was 
that they presented results by Source - not combined. This is still evident in 
a fashion in the travel sites where you can start multiple search sessions on 
the individual sites.

We use Federated Search for what we do in the library/information space. It 
equates directly to Jonathan's Broadcast Search which was the original term I 
used when talking about it about 10 years ago. Broadcast is more descriptive, 
and I prefer it, but it seems an uphill struggle to get it accepted.

Fed Search has the problem of Ray's definition of Federated, to mean a bunch 
of things brought together. It can be broadcast search (real time searching of 
remote Sources and aggregation of a virtual result set), or searching of a 
local (to the searcher) index which is composed of material federated from 
multiple Sources at some previous time. We tend to use the term Aggregate 
Index for this (and for the Summon-type index) Mixed content is almost a 
given, so that is not an issue. And Federated Search systems have to undertake 
in real time the normalization and other tasks that Summon will be (presumably) 
putting into its aggregate index.

A problem in terminology we come across is the use of local (notice my 
careful caveat in its use above). It is used to mean local to the searcher (as 
in the aggregate/meta index above), or it is used to mean local to the original 
documents (i.e. at the native Source).

I can't imagine this has done more than confirm that there is no agreed 
terminology - which we sort of all knew. So we just do a lot of explaining - 
with pictures - to people.

Peter Noerr


Dr Peter Noerr
CTO, MuseGlobal, Inc.

+1 415 896 6873 (office)
+1 415 793 6547 (mobile)
www.museglobal.com




 -Original Message-
 From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of
 Jonathan Rochkind
 Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 08:59
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon
 
 Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress wrote:
 
  Leaving aside metasearch and broadcast search (terms invented more
 recently)
  it  is a shame if federated has really lost its distinction
  fromdistributed.  Historically, a federated database is one that
  integrates multiple (autonomous) databases so it is in effect a
 virtual
  distributed database, though a single database.I don't think
 that's a
  hard concept and I don't think it is a trivial distinction.
 
 
 For at least 10 years vendors in the library market have been selling
 us
 products called federated search which are in fact
 distributed/broadcast search products.
 
 If you want to reclaim the term federated to mean a local index, I
 think you have a losing battle in front of you.
 
 So I'm sticking with broadcast search and local index.  Sometimes
 you need to use terms invented more recently when the older terms have
 been used ambiguously or contradictorily.  To me, understanding the two
 different techniques and their differences is more important than the
 terminology -- it's just important that the terminology be understood.


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Diane I. Hillmann

Jonathan:

I think you've cut to the chase on this one and seen the potential.  I
went to one of the roll out presentations at Midwinter on Summon, and
was quite impressed.  As someone who *was* an aggregator of metadata in
the recent past (NSDL in the early part of this decade), I can attest to
the fact that making disparate metadata play well together is not an
easy task.  The benefit of doing it the way Summon does it is threefold:

1. They are dealing directly with each provider, and saving the
libraries from having to do this (this is not a small thing, trust me)
2. They recognize the need and the potential for normalizing and
improving the metadata in aggregate (which is generally cheaper, and
vastly improves the behavior and possibilities for the data)
3. Because they also have data on what journals any particular library
customer has subscribed to, they can customize the product for each
library, ensuring that the library's users aren't served a bunch of
results that they ultimately can't access.

This very much the kind of thing that my colleagues at NSDL were trying
to do, but for a lot of reasons (largely political, unfortunately) were
never able to realize.

There will be lots of challenges for them as they move forward with
this, and I for one will be watching closely.  I did speak to Peter
McCracken after the Midwinter presentation, and pointed out that they
might find dealing with personal names a challenge they might want to
take up sooner, rather than later--remember they have both article
metadata and library metadata being presented together, with vastly
different conventions for names ...

Diane

Jonathan Rochkind wrote:

Dr R. Sanderson wrote:

Eric,

How is this 'new type' of index any different from an index of 
OAI-PMH harvested material?  Which in turn is no different from any 
other local search, just a different method of ingesting the data?


Sounds like good PR to me, rather than a revolution ;)
  
I don't know about revolution. But your right that this _approach_ 
is similar to an OAI-PMH approach sure. But getting this approach to 
actually work reliably and succesfully with published scholarly 
articles -- is NOT easy.  Most of these publishers and aggregators do 
not have OAI-PMH feeds. (And even if they did, the typical OAI-PMH 
feed supplying only OAI-DC data does NOT provide sufficient structured 
metadata for a search of scholarly content).


Most of them do not share their metadata freely.  You need to have an 
individual relationship with each one, and you need workflow in place 
on your end to make sure you have updated metadata for each one, and 
you need to deal with the inevitable bugs and bad data from the 
publishers and vendors, and you need to do some normalizing so that 
they can all actually live together in an index that works for the user.


This is not an easy thing to do. I believe that some library 
consortiums have long histories of trying to do this (OhioLink?); some 
have given up and no longer try to do it (CDL I think?), because it's 
very expensive and difficult to do right.


If SerialSolutions has succeeded in doing it so it works well, and can 
provide it an affordable cost -- this will, in my opinion be huge.


It's not the basic technology of having a local index that's 
revolutionary.  It's, potentially, applying that technology to this 
particular case, and actually having it produce something that works 
well for end-users, and being able to do it at an affordable cost.
But certainly you don't have to be SerialSolutions to do this. I hope 
that the product succeeds, and I hope that it gets 'competitors' 
(library consortial and other vendors) so we have options.


But if it was so easy to do affordably, we'd have it already, right?

Jonathan




Rob

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
 

On Apr 21, 2009, at 10:40 AM, Mike Taylor wrote:
   

I, and most of the people I've worked with, have been using the terms
metasearch, federated search, broadcast search and distributed
search synonymously for years.  Have they now settled down into
  


 

But I believe we are also seeing a new type of index manifesting
itself, and this new index has yet to be named. Specifically, I'm
thinking of the index where various types of content is aggregated
into a single index and then queried. For example, instead of
providing a federated search against one or more library catalogs, a
Z39.50 accessible journal article index, a local cache of harvested
OAI content, etc., I think we are beginning to see all of these
content silos (and others) brought together into a single (Solr/
Lucene) index and searched simultaneously. I'm not sure, but I think
this is how Summon works.



  




Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Jonathan Rochkind
I think I like your term aggregated index even better than local 
index, thanks Peter. You're right that local can be confusing as far 
as local to WHAT.


So that's my new choice of terminology with the highest chance of being 
understood and least chance of being misconstrued: broadcast search 
vs. aggregated index.


As we've discovered in this thread, if you say federated search 
without qualification, different people _will_ have different ideas of 
what you're talking about, as apparently the phrase has been 
historically used differently by different people/communities.


I think broadcast search and aggregated index are specific enough 
that it would be harder for reasonable people to misconstrue -- and 
don't (yet?) have a history of being used to refer to different things 
by different people. So it's what I'm going to use.


Jonathan

Peter Noerr wrote:
From one of the Federated Search vendor's perspective... 


It seems in the broader web world we in the library world have lost 
metasearch. That has become the province of those systems (mamma, dogpile, 
etc.) which search the big web search engines (G,Y,M, etc.) primarily for shoppers and 
travelers (kayak, mobissimo, etc.) and so on. One of the original differences between 
these engines and the library/information world ones was that they presented results by 
Source - not combined. This is still evident in a fashion in the travel sites where you 
can start multiple search sessions on the individual sites.

We use Federated Search for what we do in the library/information space. It 
equates directly to Jonathan's Broadcast Search which was the original term I used when 
talking about it about 10 years ago. Broadcast is more descriptive, and I prefer it, but 
it seems an uphill struggle to get it accepted.

Fed Search has the problem of Ray's definition of Federated, to mean a bunch of things 
brought together. It can be broadcast search (real time searching of remote Sources and 
aggregation of a virtual result set), or searching of a local (to the searcher) index which is 
composed of material federated from multiple Sources at some previous time. We tend to use the term 
Aggregate Index for this (and for the Summon-type index) Mixed content is almost a 
given, so that is not an issue. And Federated Search systems have to undertake in real time the 
normalization and other tasks that Summon will be (presumably) putting into its aggregate index.

A problem in terminology we come across is the use of local (notice my 
careful caveat in its use above). It is used to mean local to the searcher (as in the 
aggregate/meta index above), or it is used to mean local to the original documents (i.e. 
at the native Source).

I can't imagine this has done more than confirm that there is no agreed 
terminology - which we sort of all knew. So we just do a lot of explaining - 
with pictures - to people.

Peter Noerr


Dr Peter Noerr
CTO, MuseGlobal, Inc.

+1 415 896 6873 (office)
+1 415 793 6547 (mobile)
www.museglobal.com




  

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of
Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 08:59
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress wrote:


Leaving aside metasearch and broadcast search (terms invented more
  

recently)


it  is a shame if federated has really lost its distinction
fromdistributed.  Historically, a federated database is one that
integrates multiple (autonomous) databases so it is in effect a
  

virtual


distributed database, though a single database.I don't think
  

that's a


hard concept and I don't think it is a trivial distinction.

  

For at least 10 years vendors in the library market have been selling
us
products called federated search which are in fact
distributed/broadcast search products.

If you want to reclaim the term federated to mean a local index, I
think you have a losing battle in front of you.

So I'm sticking with broadcast search and local index.  Sometimes
you need to use terms invented more recently when the older terms have
been used ambiguously or contradictorily.  To me, understanding the two
different techniques and their differences is more important than the
terminology -- it's just important that the terminology be understood.



  


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Peter Murray

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Apr 21, 2009, at 11:02 AM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
It _would_ be great if SerSol would actually give you (if you were  
subscribed) a feed of their harvested and normalized metadata, so  
you could still pay them to collect and normalize it, but then use  
it for your own purposes outside of Summon. I hope SerSol will  
consider this down the line, if Summon is succesful.



I don't think it is part of SerSol's business model to offer a feed of  
the full metadata it aggregates, but it does seem to be part of the  
business model to offer an API upon which you could put your own  
interface to the underlying aggregated data.



On Apr 21, 2009, at 12:35 PM, Joe Hourcle wrote:

Wouldn't this just a union catalog?


Catalog is such a loaded term that I wouldn't want to touch it... ;-)


Peter
- --
Peter Murrayhttp://www.pandc.org/peter/work/
Assistant Director, New Service Development  tel:+1-614-728-3600;ext=338
OhioLINK: the Ohio Library and Information NetworkColumbus, Ohio
The Disruptive Library Technology Jesterhttp://dltj.org/
Attrib-Noncomm-Share   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/


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Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress

From: Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu

If you want to reclaim the term federated to mean a local index, I think
you have a losing battle in front of you.


It's not a battle I plan to pursue, I don't fight battles anymore. I just 
feel obligated to observe that when vocabulary is tinkered with in this 
fashion -- and I did notice, probably more than ten years ago, that 
federated was being manipulated --  it  makes it difficult to express 
modeling concepts when definitions are a moving target.  In the future, 
vendors should be more careful about messing around with established 
definitions.  If you don't like the federated model (the old one), don't 
redefine the term, find a new term.  The old term could someday come in 
handy for expressing why you don't like that model, but it's useless if 
nobody agrees what it means.   --Ray


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Jonathan Rochkind

Peter Murray wrote:
I don't think it is part of SerSol's business model to offer a feed of  
the full metadata it aggregates, but it does seem to be part of the  
business model to offer an API upon which you could put your own  
interface to the underlying aggregated data.
  


Yep, it's not presently, but I'm hoping that in the future they expand 
to that business model as well.  I think it's feasible.


An API on which you can act on their index is great.  But actually 
having the data to re-index yourself in exactly the way you wanted would 
give you even more power (if you wanted to do the more work to get it).  
And would still be worth paying SerSol for, for the work of aggregating 
and normalizing the data.


Jonathan


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Alan Darnell
It is possible for a consortium to build the same sort of service as Serials 
Solutions.  Besides the OhioLink example, we've been doing that in Ontario for 
the last 7 years or so - aggregating ejournal content (15 million articles), 
abstract and index databases (over 100 now in partnership with Proquest), 
ebooks (about 50,000 commercial ebooks and 170,000 plus digitized ebooks from 
the Open Content Alliance).  It is a significant effort to deal with all the 
data feeds but as publishers migrate their production processes to XML we're 
finding that it is getting a little easier each year.  We aggregate everything 
in a single XML database from a company called MarkLogic.  The biggest issues 
we struggle with are currency - it's never as fast as the publisher site though 
it isn't far behind when things are working well - and quality control - the 
publisher production processes are shifting to XML but the quality of the data 
varies.  But hey, it's a library, and these are age-old issues present even in 
the print world.

Alan


On 4/21/09 2:13 PM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote:

Peter Murray wrote:
 I don't think it is part of SerSol's business model to offer a feed of
 the full metadata it aggregates, but it does seem to be part of the
 business model to offer an API upon which you could put your own
 interface to the underlying aggregated data.


Yep, it's not presently, but I'm hoping that in the future they expand
to that business model as well.  I think it's feasible.

An API on which you can act on their index is great.  But actually
having the data to re-index yourself in exactly the way you wanted would
give you even more power (if you wanted to do the more work to get it).
And would still be worth paying SerSol for, for the work of aggregating
and normalizing the data.

Jonathan


Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

2009-04-21 Thread Jason Stirnaman
Agree. When you step outside libraryland and into corporate/enterprise
IT (thinking Autonomy, FAST, etc.) then federated search is often used
to refer to aggregated local indexing of distinct databases.

Jason
-- 

Jason Stirnaman
Digital Projects Librarian/School of Medicine Support
A.R. Dykes Library, University of Kansas Medical Center
jstirna...@kumc.edu
913-588-7319


 On 4/21/2009 at 12:56 PM, in message 49ee08d3.7010...@jhu.edu,
Jonathan
Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote:
 I think I like your term aggregated index even better than local 
 index, thanks Peter. You're right that local can be confusing as
far 
 as local to WHAT.
 
 So that's my new choice of terminology with the highest chance of
being 
 understood and least chance of being misconstrued: broadcast search

 vs. aggregated index.
 
 As we've discovered in this thread, if you say federated search 
 without qualification, different people _will_ have different ideas
of 
 what you're talking about, as apparently the phrase has been 
 historically used differently by different people/communities.
 
 I think broadcast search and aggregated index are specific enough

 that it would be harder for reasonable people to misconstrue -- and 
 don't (yet?) have a history of being used to refer to different
things 
 by different people. So it's what I'm going to use.
 
 Jonathan
 
 Peter Noerr wrote:
 From one of the Federated Search vendor's perspective... 

 It seems in the broader web world we in the library world have lost

 metasearch. That has become the province of those systems (mamma,
dogpile, 
 etc.) which search the big web search engines (G,Y,M, etc.) primarily
for 
 shoppers and travelers (kayak, mobissimo, etc.) and so on. One of the

 original differences between these engines and the
library/information world 
 ones was that they presented results by Source - not combined. This
is still 
 evident in a fashion in the travel sites where you can start multiple
search 
 sessions on the individual sites.

 We use Federated Search for what we do in the library/information
space. 
 It equates directly to Jonathan's Broadcast Search which was the
original 
 term I used when talking about it about 10 years ago. Broadcast is
more 
 descriptive, and I prefer it, but it seems an uphill struggle to get
it 
 accepted.

 Fed Search has the problem of Ray's definition of Federated, to mean
a 
 bunch of things brought together. It can be broadcast search (real
time 
 searching of remote Sources and aggregation of a virtual result set),
or 
 searching of a local (to the searcher) index which is composed of
material 
 federated from multiple Sources at some previous time. We tend to use
the 
 term Aggregate Index for this (and for the Summon-type index) Mixed
content 
 is almost a given, so that is not an issue. And Federated Search
systems have 
 to undertake in real time the normalization and other tasks that
Summon will 
 be (presumably) putting into its aggregate index.

 A problem in terminology we come across is the use of local
(notice my 
 careful caveat in its use above). It is used to mean local to the
searcher 
 (as in the aggregate/meta index above), or it is used to mean local
to the 
 original documents (i.e. at the native Source).

 I can't imagine this has done more than confirm that there is no
agreed 
 terminology - which we sort of all knew. So we just do a lot of
explaining - 
 with pictures - to people.

 Peter Noerr


 Dr Peter Noerr
 CTO, MuseGlobal, Inc.

 +1 415 896 6873 (office)
 +1 415 793 6547 (mobile)
 www.museglobal.com 




   
 -Original Message-
 From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On
Behalf Of
 Jonathan Rochkind
 Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 08:59
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 
 Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Serials Solutions Summon

 Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress wrote:
 
 Leaving aside metasearch and broadcast search (terms invented
more
   
 recently)
 
 it  is a shame if federated has really lost its distinction
 fromdistributed.  Historically, a federated database is one
that
 integrates multiple (autonomous) databases so it is in effect a
   
 virtual
 
 distributed database, though a single database.I don't think
   
 that's a
 
 hard concept and I don't think it is a trivial distinction.

   
 For at least 10 years vendors in the library market have been
selling
 us
 products called federated search which are in fact
 distributed/broadcast search products.

 If you want to reclaim the term federated to mean a local index,
I
 think you have a losing battle in front of you.

 So I'm sticking with broadcast search and local index. 
Sometimes
 you need to use terms invented more recently when the older terms
have
 been used ambiguously or contradictorily.  To me, understanding the
two
 different techniques and their differences is more important than
the
 terminology -- it's just important that the terminology be
understood.
 

   


[CODE4LIB] Fwd: Job Posting - Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian - University of Vermont

2009-04-21 Thread Winona Salesky


*Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian /Library Assistant Professor -
University of Vermont Libraries*

The University of Vermont Libraries' Center for Digital Initiatives
(CDI, http://cdi.uvm.edu/) seeks a detail-oriented, innovative, and
energetic librarian for the position of Digital Initiatives Metadata
Librarian.  The Institute for Museum and Library Services has recently
awarded the University of Vermont a 24-month grant to continue
development of the Libraries' digital initiatives.  The main goal of
this grant is to build a user community for the CDI that will engage as
active participants in the development of the CDI and the content and
services it provides.  The Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian will
provide expertise and leadership in the creation and maintenance of
metadata for digital content acquired or created by the CDI.  The
Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian will help to develop, refine, and
implement policies, procedures, workflows, and metadata standards for
the CDI; manage digitization projects; and participate in the overall
management of the CDI.*
*

*RESPONSIBILITIES:* Provides expertise and leadership in the creation
and maintenance of metadata for digital content acquired or created by
the CDI; provides descriptive, technical, and structural metadata for
digital content; evaluates and maintains quality control of metadata
operations; trains and supports metadata staff; maintains documentation
on metadata best practices; analyzes metadata needs and provides
estimated metadata costs and timeline for proposed projects; designs,
implements, and manages project workflows;collaborates with CDI and
Libraries staff in selection of digital projects and content;
participates in the management of the CDI; promotes and reports on CDI
activities to local, regional, and national communities; represents the
CDI in professional and campus organizations and initiatives.

*REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:* Master's degree from an ALA-accredited
program or foreign equivalent; experience with metadata work on digital
projects; experience with XML.; experience with standards-based non-MARC
metadata schemas, such as Dublin Core, MODS, METS, EAD and TEI;
knowledge of MARC; familiarity with controlled vocabularies, such as
LCSH, AAT, LCTGM, GNIS, and TGN; demonstrated project management
experience; excellent attention to detail; ability to work independently
and in a team environment; excellent interpersonal and communication
skills; commitment to professional achievement and growth; commitment to
diversity and inclusion.

*PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS*: Working knowledge of digital asset
management systems; demonstrated understanding of preservation metadata,
such as PREMIS; experience in crosswalking, normalizing, and
transforming xml metadata; working knowledge of XSLT.

*SALARY AND APPLICATION INFORMATION:* Qualifications should merit
appointment at the rank of library assistant professor (non-tenure
track).  Salary is commensurate with experience, not less than $49,191
for this position.  Benefit package includes TIAA/CREF or alternate
plan, managed health care plan, and 22 days of annual paid vacation.
Review of applications will begin on May 8, 2009 and will continue until
position is filled.  Anticipated start date is August 15, 2009.  Apply
on line at http://www.uvmjobs.com http://www.uvmjobs.com/ with letter
of application, vita, and names and contact information for three
professional references.  Job Requisition Number = 032645.  Questions
about the position may be directed to the chair of the search committee
at chris.bu...@uvm.edu  The University of Vermont is an AA/EO employer.



- End forwarded message -



- End forwarded message -

*Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian /Library Assistant Professor - 
University of Vermont Libraries*


The University of Vermont Libraries' Center for Digital Initiatives 
(CDI, http://cdi.uvm.edu/) seeks a detail-oriented, innovative, and 
energetic librarian for the position of Digital Initiatives Metadata 
Librarian.  The Institute for Museum and Library Services has recently 
awarded the University of Vermont a 24-month grant to continue 
development of the Libraries' digital initiatives.  The main goal of 
this grant is to build a user community for the CDI that will engage as 
active participants in the development of the CDI and the content and 
services it provides.  The Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian will 
provide expertise and leadership in the creation and maintenance of 
metadata for digital content acquired or created by the CDI.  The 
Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian will help to develop, refine, and 
implement policies, procedures, workflows, and metadata standards for 
the CDI; manage digitization projects; and participate in the overall 
management of the CDI.*

*

*RESPONSIBILITIES:* Provides expertise and leadership in the creation 
and maintenance of metadata for digital content acquired or created by