feednavigator – a medical current awareness service

FeedNavigator – Medical CurrentAwareness Service

Pasi Keski-NisulaIt-SpecialistNational Library of Health Sciences [email protected]

National Library of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine

mailto:[email protected]

The Internet is a mountain size pileof journals and books where thebest sellers are on the surface

As the library people know best…

National Library of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine

27.06.2008Pasi Keski-Nisula, FeedNavigator – a Medical Current Awareness Service 3

What if all web sites would be catalogued into”one huge library database”?

No unique user interfaces of unique sites.

No unique search functions of unique sites.

No unique addresses and hundreds of bookmarks.


What if all web sites would be catalogued into”one huge library database”?

One would have to use only a single service.

One would have to learn only a single user interface.

One would not have to learn many different search enginebehaviors.


”Traditional” search engines try to do this

Search engines collect data (words without meaning)from sites into a single searchable database.Search engines have been made for the web 1.0.

-> Very limited semantics

-> Not good enough for current awareness!


Terkko realized back in 2004 that web feeds wouldbecome an important step for semantic web.TerkkoSiteSummary was a personal customizable webpage.

Collected tens of web feeds into one single web page.

Without any database system. -> No advanced functions

One year later Terkko introduced FeedNavigator.


TerkkoSiteSummary


FeedNavigator does it better

Collects information from web feeds into a singlesearchable database.Web feed is a common text file which includes”catalogued” information of the latest contents of websites.A number of the sites that have web feeds risescontinuosly.The most common formats are RSS, ATOM and PodCastwhich all are XML-formats.


FeedNavigator collects web feed-data andallows to use this data in many ways

Data isdownloadedintoFeedNavigatordatabase A Client uses

the database


”Traditional” Search Engines vs. FeedNavigator

Collects data->Collects information

Very limited personalization.-> Efficient personalization.

Database updates slowly and irregularly.->Database updates all the time and regularly.

Search functions are limited.->Advanced search functions. (boolean,truncation...)


”Traditional” Search Engines vs. FeedNavigator

Database includes obsolete data.->No obsolete data.

Multi-field.-> Single-field.

Spam in search results.-> No spam in search results. No ads.

One search engine has a monopoly.-> Uncommercial and free for all.


FeedNavigator’s Sources

2784 journal feeds73 medical topics (+ library sciences)

58 news feeds326 blog feeds477 university of Helsinki feeds

Medical dissertations

Helsinki Medical Publications

Helka library catalogs

Researchers publications

Library evaluates and adds new feeds all the time into thesystem.


FeedNavigator’s Data

Almost half of million current referencesSource name

Article title

Link to article

Description

Author(s)

DOI

Time of downloading the item

Some information added from other sources because thedata is re-used in Scholar Chart –service.

Impact Factors

SCImago Journal Ranks (SJR)

Hirsch-index


FeedNavigator’s Data Re-use

Data can be recycled in many ways:Feeds can be read with separate readers.

Data can be exported into other web services:

- Scholar Chart

- DSpace

- Intranet

- LUX

- Branch libraries

- Other web sites…


Some FeedNavigator’s Features

Phrase searching & truncation and boolean operators.Updates 24/7SFX-links.RefWorks-links (bibliographic management program).An article delivery service.Mobile interface.

Works with all new mobile devices. It has a very simplified

user interface, but has almost all the same functions as

standard version.


Basic Use of FeedNavigator

User can customize a personal front page feed (MyFeed)by selecting user’s favorite medical publications andsearch keywords:1. User can click the boxes in front of the source names to

save favorite sources.

2. User can make a query and click a “MyFeed”-button to

save search query.

References can be saved to MyArticles page which isuser’s own article repository.

www.terkko.helsinki.fi/feednavigator

http://www.terkko.helsinki.fi/feednavigator


FeedNavigator Ingredients

RSS, ATOM and PodCast -feeds.Web 2.0 principle of continuous developing.Open standards and open software.Hosted and developed by Terkko.Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, XHTML, JavaScript, CSS…Dynamic timing of web feed downloads.

The system keeps track how regularly publisher’s web feeds

are updated and based on this data it adjusts dynamically

the download frequencies of individual web feeds. This

assures that there will be always enough network and

computing resources to update all the feeds when new feeds

are added.


Web Feed

Web feed is a XML-formatted text file.Includes multiple items which are ordered by publicationdate.Most common information:

Link.

Title.

Description.

Date.

Other possible information, for example:Authors

Language

Category

Etc.


Web Feed

The publisher has a file at the server and updates itfrequently.The most popular web feed formats at the moment aredifferent versions of RSS, Atom and Podcast.Maybe the most important downside is bandwidthconsumption that the frequent downloading involves.


Web Feed

Source

Article


Who is using FeedNavigator?


www.terkko.helsinki.fi/feednavigator

Thank You!

http://www.terkko.helsinki.fi/feednavigator

feednavigator – a medical current awareness service

Health & Medicine