Weekly News Digest

Ovid Technologies, a provider of electronic medical, scientific, and academic research information solutions, announced SearchSolver, its next-generation federated search solution. With SearchSolver as a single point of access and authentication, users can conduct one-step searches across hundreds of information sources and retrieve unified results. Results can further be edited and ranked as well as exported in research work tools. Users can also combine Ovid SearchSolver with Ovid LinkSolver to create an end-to-end solution—from precision searching to full-text linking.

Designed to integrate easily with existing research environments, SearchSolver's advanced functionality allows users to:

• Search an unlimited number of sources simultaneously
• Search across all types of sources from multiple vendors, including electronic journals, bibliographic databases, Internet portals, and OPACs
• Display, rank, or export results consistently across all interfaces in a single step
• Refine and limit search results using the SearchSolver interface. Advanced query parsing allows users to search beyond keyword (also title, author, descriptors)
• Explore a topic further using a specific database's native interface
• Link to external sources, using Ovid LinkSolver or other OpenURL resolvers

The flexibility of the new SearchSolver allows institutions to create a fully customizable tool that can include branding (such as logos or style sheets) to meet specialized requirements or end-user preferences, interface design (including nonstandard fonts and European characters), as well as a number of database connectors to meet various resource needs. SearchSolver includes a ready-made library of more than 2,000 database connectors.

Source: Ovid Technologies, Inc.

InQuira, a provider of search solutions for improving the quality of customer interactions through Web sites and contact centers, announced InQuira 7, an upgrade to its Intelligent Search platform. In addition to the recently announced Contact Center Advisor and Information Manager modules, new products that are now part of the modular platform include Personalized Navigation and Process Wizards.

The InQuira 7 Intelligent Search Platform is designed to help improve real-time customer interaction with a set of products that deliver personalized Web site experiences and/or personalized responses for contact center agents. InQuira 7 also accurately answers the real-time requests of customers, addresses the needs behind the requests, and incorporates personalized sets of needs-based marketing messages as well. The InQuira platform is built on a unique combination of computational linguistics and mission-critical enterprise software, including natural language processing and search technologies that can leverage multiple content sources to create a response.

InQuira's customers include AT&T, Bank of America, BEA Systems, Charter One Bank, Fidelity Investments, General Electric, Honda, Sovereign Bank, and SunTrust. For more information, visit http://www.inquira.com. Go to http://www.hondacars.com for an implementation example.

Source: InQuira

ProQuest Information and Learning announced an expanded agreement with publisher Real Times, Inc. to digitize historical content from The Chicago Defender, an influential national African-American newspaper. When the database is complete, it will be available online from 1909 through 1975 both in ProQuest's forthcoming Black Studies Center and in ProQuest Historical Newspapers. The database will launch later this year.

Founded in 1905, The Defender became the most influential black newspaper before World War I, with more than half of its circulation outside of its home base in Chicago. The Chicago Defender content will allow researchers to study many significant events in American history that received only cursory attention from other newspapers. The Defender strongly advocated for equality among all races. During World War I, it successfully urged African-Americans to leave the segregated South to work in the industrial North. It covered the Red Summer Riots of 1919, editorialized for anti-lynching legislation, and published Walter White and Langston Hughes, as well as early works of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

The ProQuest Historical Newspapers project encompasses newspapers with deep historical value for researchers in various fields. The Chicago Defender will join other U.S. newspapers already in the ProQuest program: TheNew York Times, TheWall Street Journal, TheChristian Science Monitor, TheWashington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, TheBoston Globe, and The Atlanta Constitution. All of the newspapers are cross-searchable within the ProQuest interface.

Source: ProQuest Information and Learning