The FedLemur project: Federated search in the real world

Federated search and distributed information retrieval systems provide a single user interface for searching multiple full‐text search engines. They have been an active area of research for more than a decade, but in spite of their success as a research topic, they are still rare in operational envi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 2006-02, Vol.57 (3), p.347-358
Main Authors: Avrahami, Thi Truong, Yau, Lawrence, Si, Luo, Callan, Jamie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Census data
Evaluation
Exact sciences and technology
FedLemur project
FedStats
Full text databases
Government
Heuristic
Human-computer interaction
Information and communication sciences
Information retrieval
Information retrieval systems
Information retrieval systems. Information and document management system
Information science. Documentation
Information systems
Mathematical models
Online databases
Online information retrieval
Performance measures
Population statistics
Portals
Prototypes
Sciences and techniques of general use
Search engines
Searching
Statistical data
Studies
Technology transfer
USA
User interface
Web portals
World Wide Web
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Summary:Federated search and distributed information retrieval systems provide a single user interface for searching multiple full‐text search engines. They have been an active area of research for more than a decade, but in spite of their success as a research topic, they are still rare in operational environments. This article discusses a prototype federated search system developed for the U.S. government's FedStats Web portal, and the issues addressed in adapting research solutions to this operational environment. A series of experiments explore how well prior research results, parameter settings, and heuristics apply in the FedStats environment. The article concludes with a set of lessons learned from this technology transfer effort, including observations about search engine quality in the “real world.”
ISSN:1532-2882
2330-1635
1532-2890
2330-1643
DOI:10.1002/asi.20283