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Article from Library
Journal: "Online Databases," July
2003, p. 33
Online companies
continuously tinker with their systems. Commercial aggregators need
to accommodate new databases or new features such as linking. Search
engines must change ranking algorithms to subvert rogue web sites or
hackers who learn to manipulate ranking. Systems need to improve
performance and keep up with the competition or the current fashions
in interface design.
It isn’t often that a
system can afford to do a total makeover, including architecture,
new programming code, and new functionality. Factiva did this over
the last few years; recently the H.W. Wilson Company has totally
revamped its system. Ed Tallent, Boston College, reviewed the new
WilsonWeb (Database&Disc Reviews, LJ 1/03, p. 173ff.)
focusing mainly on the search features and interface. But a total
redesign goes beyond what the user sees and searches. It is also a
redesign of the underlying structure and methods by which Wilson
indexers and editors work.
Database Creation
Lucian Parziale, Wilson’s
vice president for information systems said that the impetus was to
handle more full text databases better and to develop a new
production system. To accomplish this, the new system uses Oracle
software and includes a new editorial system (WIN), a new way to
store files, and the new WilsonWeb search and retrieval system with
Verity search software. The new system represents an investment of
over $10 million.
The new system begins
with database creation. The Wilson abstracting and indexing
(A&I) and full-text products require various processes, such as
journal issue check-in, A&I, and editing (and, now, full text
preparation). Traditionally, this involved shuffling paper journals
and creating electronic records for sequential processes. In WIN,
journal articles are scanned and converted to PDF files when an
issue is checked in, so the indexers and abstractors can work at
their desktops at the same time the full-text version is readied.
Since Wilson indexers are in New York and the abstractors are in
Dublin, Ireland, this simultaneous processing is a boon to
production.
In Wilson’s new
repository system the content is organized by type of material—bibliographic,
biographical, and monographic—not by the corresponding product as
it was previously. Most of the Wilson bibliographic databases come
in a variety of products (including indexing only; indexing and
abstracting; and indexing, abstracting, and full texts). Now there
is just one master database for each product family rather than
separate databases. Through authentication, customers view only the
parts for which their library has paid. This less redundant
underlying organization replaces 67 separate product files with 39.
WilsonWeb
"WilsonWeb Next
Generation" is the new system that users see. It was designed
with input from focus groups, from which a major lesson emerged—no
one system can make every user happy. In response, Wilson created
customizable administrative functions. Librarians can customize the
interface and search options for their customers and subgroups of
customers. Buttons, names of buttons, default search screens, access
options, and more can all be customized. Libraries can let all the
records in a database be searched or limit searches to only those
titles held by the library.
This means that
WilsonWeb may thus look quite different in each library. One library
version may have a logo on every screen, another may default
displays to only the title and author for the first ten records,
still another may display buttons for all the advanced search
features.
The Verity search engine
is a major change in the WilsonWeb system because it allows
natural-language searching and provides relevance-ranked results.
Experienced searchers can use Boolean logic, proximity operators,
and field-restricted searching. Also, in a first for Wilson, in the
full-text version of a database the complete articles are
searchable. Still, Wilson’s controlled vocabulary remains a
precision tool and advantage. The controlled subject terms are not
only searchable, but the Wilson thesauri are invoked automatically
in searching, so an incorrect term is mapped to the correct term.
Term lists can be browsed and selected, plus broader, narrower and
related terms are displayed. Matches in any of Wilson’s name and
subject authority files produce results that have a high relevancy
ranking.
Full Text and Linking
Full text was a major
impetus for these changes, according to Parziale, "The market
called for more full text." WilsonWeb full-text databases
provide PDF versions of articles (the same format generated at the
beginning of the process), but Wilson honchos also recognize the
need to allow linking to the full texts found on other systems.
WilsonLink, another component of the new system, uses SFX software
to link to full texts within Wilson and other open-URL databases and
systems.
Running an online
service requires a commitment to keeping up with new developments.
Sometimes it requires a total revamping. Since the upgrade’s
unveiling last year, Wilson has already made improvements in
response to user and reviewer input. An online system is never
completely finished. |
