On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_nd.edu> wrote:
> Actually having possession of the data/metadata opens quite up a number of possibilities. The creation of a unified search interface is just one of them. No information silos. If the data/metadata is all in the same index, then relevancy ranking algorithms and statistical analysis will be much more valid.
Actually, just to play devil's advocate here:
How would this (in and of itself) eliminate information silos? On the
surface, it would initially create more. Summon, after all, is just
another silo, albeit a really big one.
Secondly, doesn't this scenario set up the same problem we're
currently trying to struggle with (every library has the same copy of
the same MARC record, to manage and maintain in a suboptimal system to
managing and maintaining them) except at orders of magnitude greater
scale?
Let me just say that I don't necessarily subscribe to these arguments
I'm making (although I am definitely interested in seeing responses to
them) but at the same time, I'm also not convinced that aggregated
indexes are necessarily the "solution" either (although, yes, in
comparison to federated search, probably).
-Ross.
Received on Tue Feb 16 2010 - 22:16:31 EST