NFAIS bloggin part IV: Search Technologies part II

Peter Noerr, CTO of MuseGlobal- discussing federated search. Noerr sees semantic search as an eventual solution to many problems, but also thinks it is still on the distant horizon despite what many of its most enthusiastic advocates say. Federated search is a way of patching the issues in the interim- it doesn't index the world, it doesn't build centralized indexes and databases. However, it does enable users to submit single queries to multiple sources of data, on demand, in real time, and is able to interpret and communicate in multiple formats and languages- and it also incorporates the 'long tail' content of some of the incredibly niche academic databases. Federated search solutions can connect to both enterprise-specific, subscription, and open-web sources. However, while federated search has been around for more than a decade, and has a good number of specialized vendors, AND most specialized sources of data are compliant- it's still cumbersome to use, difficult to manage and maintain, and the vast majority of libraries don't use it! The value question is still very much up in the air, and depends to a great extent on what resources are available to the institution to maintain the search tool and to provide expensive subscription sources.