cogdogblog: 3 LO Searches for 1 Query: Merlot's Federated Search Comments and Trackbacks

CDB Entry: 3 LO Searches for 1 Query: Merlot's Federated Search

Mon, 17 Nov 2003 14:15:36 -0700

Zoom-zoom. More power for those looking for learning objects or instructional resources. MERLOT's Federated Search allows you to enter keywords (say "cell mitosis") and with one click conduct a search of MERLOT, Australia's )EdNA Online, and the Science Math resources...

comment by: Scott Leslie

Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:38:33 -0700

It would be interesting (to me at least) to find out how they decide on the comparative relevancies of results from different catalogs. I liked the fact that the default result seemed to be by relevance across catalogs, but couldn't puzzle out (nor did there seem to be any material supporting) why any result was higher than the other.

comment by: Alan Levine

Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:50:24 -0700

I cannot recall what they said during the MERLOT presentation, but would guess the ranking is pretty simple such as occurrence count of keywords...

comment by: Stephen Downes

Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:28:56 -0700

Gee, and Google only gives you one search for a query....

comment by: Alan Levine

Tue, 18 Nov 2003 18:59:22 -0700

and Google gives you all those thousands of other matches that are not learning objects (porn too!)