Presented at the Endeavor Users Group (EndUser) meeting in 2004, this talk advocated for Endeavor to keep pushing their ENCompass product to the limits of functionality. Using for its starting point a tendency of some of the federated searching connectors to fail on a regular basis, it argues that it's important to keep having some level of failures, because otherwise it means the product only incorporates well-tested and proven technology, rather than exploring the edges of what is possible.

1. WHY I HOPE
CONTINUES TO “FAIL”
Alan Manifold
Systems Implementation Manager
Purdue University Libraries
West Lafayette, Indiana
manifold@purdue.edu
Session 82

2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This presentation
would not have been
possible without the
contributions of:
Stolen logos, plus
the products we live
by.
Especially the ENCompass
Gateway Team, which designed
the interface I will show you.

3. I CONTEND
ENCompass is a completely different kind of
system than Voyager. The criteria we apply
to judging the success of Voyager don’t work
with ENCompass. It was created to “push
the envelope” of library technology and it’s
doing that. One consequence is that parts of
it fail.
=/

4. A QUICK LOOK AT
Click here for
online
Click here to
skip PowerPoint
overview slides
Click here if
online demo
doesn’t work
Click here to
see if MetaLib
works better

5. Ha! Ha! That’s a good one!
Like that’s ever going to happen!
GO BACK
(to reality)
x

6. QUICK SEARCH

7. SEARCHING…

8. RESULTS SUMMARY

9. RESULTS DISPLAY

10. FULL RECORD DISPLAY

11. VIEW FULL TEXT

12. SEARCH DATABASE DIRECTLY

13. MegaSearch Databases by Title

14. MegaSearch Databases by Subject

15. All Databases by Subject

16. All Databases by Title

17. SEARCH HISTORY

18. SAVED SEARCHES

19. SAVED RECORDS

20. SYSADMIN CLIENT

21. Z39.50 CONNECTOR

22. RELATIONSHIP MANAGER

23. WHAT IS ALL ABOUT
Database organization
Federated searching
Direct database connection
XML mapping
Results display
Linking all around
Digital collections
LinkFinderPlus
True to its
name,
ENCompass
does lots of
things.

24. ENCompass for Digital Collections has more
in common with Voyager than ENCompass
for Resource Access does. It is like an online
digital library.
Images Print, etc.
Storage &
Retrieval
Metadata Cataloging
Creation &
Editing
EDC vs. VOYAGER

25. ERA vs. VOYAGER
Access Inventory tracking
Trolling Finding
Discoverers Investigators
Purpose:
Uses:
Users:
ENCompass for Resource Access differs from
Voyager in lots of significant ways. It’s not
designed for finding known items, but for
discovering unknown resources.

26. CONNECTORS
Federated Searching is built on the
concept of connectors. ENCompass
supports four kinds:
Voyager   
Z39.50   
XML Gateways   
HSE Connectors   
How
standard?
How
familiar to
Endeavor?
How
reliable?

27. MISSION:DIFFICULT
Extract Bibliographic Info from:
Books you
published
Books
others
published
Journal
articles
in non-
Roman
scripts
Newspaper
articles

28. MISSON:IMPOSSIBLE
The further away we get from
books and journal articles, the
harder it is to extract titles,
authors, pagination, etc.
Websites
Dictionary
entries
Maps
Musical scores
Patents

29. HSE CONNECTORS
HSE Connectors have a similar mission:
extract specific data fields whether they
are there or not.
American National Biography
METADEX
Associations Unlimited
Funding Opportunities
Accunet/AP Photo Archive
AltaVista

30. HSE CONNECTORS FAIL
HSE Connectors do their work by emulating a
web user. They connect to web pages, read the
HTML and try to interpret what they read.
And some
programmer
has to tell
them how.
You’d fail,
too, if you
had to do it.

31. THEY SHOULDN’T KEEP FAILING!
Hopes:
Z39.50 connections will get more standard,
broader and more robust
XML Gateways will become more common
and more standard
More databases will support Z39.50, XML
Gateways or some future protocol
“Backend portals” will become more common
(cleaner access for HSE Connectors)
HSE Connectors will be fixed and improved,
and the technology will get better

32. NEW CHALLENGES AHEAD
Video
Partnering with Virage
Images
Partnering with Luna
Course Management Systems integration
Partnering with Blackboard and WebCT

33. MORE CHALLENGES COMING
Audio
Recommender Systems
Reputation Management
Authorization Issues
Personally Contoured Searching
Numerical Data
Non-textual Data (e.g. maps, genomes,
chemical compounds)
Digital Rights Management
Institutional Repositories

34. AND THE HORIZON IS ENDLESS
Aromatherapy Systems
Direct Image Searching (pattern recognition)
Interfaces with tools and appliances
Holographic Image Searching
Medical Device Interfaces
Data Mining
Webcam image scanning
South Australia’s Nullarbor Plains

35. XSL STYLESHEETS