Intute Repository Search: Advanced Search and Discovery Service to Showcase UK Research Output

From: Sophia Jones <Sophia.Jones_at_NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:43:11 -0000

***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.lyte_at_manchester.ac.uk


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Received on Wed Feb 18 2009 - 12:45:57 GMT