The Discovery Hoax: Commercial Databases Make Big Promises
March 8, 2010
I was given a box lunch and a can of Pepsi as compensation for my one hour talk at a conference last week. I had an interesting conversation with a former big wheel in commercial database publishing. I thought the wizard was a retired poobah. I was wrong. The fellow had his shoulder pads on, a sweatband, and Gucci cleats. He’s back on a commercial company’s publishing team. I am an old, cowardly goose, and it is with trepidation that I get too close to big people garbed for quasi-military re-enactments related to electronic information.
I asked the industry titan what his new gig involved. I recall one word, which he repeated several times to me, the addled goose. The word? “Discovery.” I thought I was having a The Graduate moment. In 2010, plastic was a loser. The winner? Discovery.
Yep, the lingo of the search and content processing market has reached the world of professional publishing and for-fee database access.
The idea, as I understood it, is that this commercial company will allow a user to enter a keyword; for example, employee stock ownership. The system will crunch away and present:
- Results from the firm’s for fee databases. Not just anyone can run a search. The user has to have access to an institutional account or sign up and pay. There is some free stuff, but this is a real, live make-money-or-die operation.
- The system will also “discover” possibly related content and list that information in the form of links. I think the idea the titan was communicating is what Endeca calls “Guided Navigation” in 1999! Not exactly yesterday! To see the Endeca system in action just go to OfficeFurniture.com.
- Content from the public Web.
The idea is that a person using a commercial system will enter a search string and then see links to related content. This works for buying office furniture. I am not sure how a computational chemist would react to a suggestion she read a blog post about a meth lab that blows up.
Yep, our professional grade service needs those custom chrome wheels. Image source: http://www.up.ac.za/organizations/movup/images/minefun/indian_haul_truck.jpg
I asked what happened if I used one of the company’s business databases and entered the search term “management.” I got a bit of double talk and the titan backed up, trying to get away from me. The reason I asked about this type of search is that I know from hands-on experience that the use of a general controlled term in his firm’s databases does not generate a usable results list. Thus, any “discovered” information is likely to be wide of the mark. Broad queries don’t often work too well in the for-fee, quite specific content in certain commercial systems. A single word like “management” in a Google search box generates what is highly ranked by clueless millions like a link to the Wikipedia entry.
The commercial databases operate on a quite different premise. When a biochemist searches for a specific compound like 7-chloro-1,3-dihydro-1-methyl-5-phenyl-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one, the biochemist pretty much wants that compound, so suggestions from the Web sound good to someone who is not a biochemist but may not rev the motor of the researcher. Highly specialized services such as Chemical Abstracts can point to other content in which the compound is mentioned. But the difference between a fuzzy word like “management” and a chemical word like “methyl-5” is significant.
I next asked the titan how his discovery system differed from a federate search. The titan’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “Hey, I thought we were friends. This is not a debate.”
Wrong. When I converse with a person, I want that person to challenge me, and I want to challenge that person. I am not too interested in one’s golf game, killing deer, or the challenges facing Conan O’Brien.
I agreed but I pointed out that tossing around marketing buzzwords when describing the features of a professional information retrieval system catches the addled goose’s attention. Here’s why:
- Commercial systems are under significant pressure from demographic shifts. One example is the nature of research is changing. Some commercial database publishers are having to charge more money to keep their revenue up. When there are fewer clients (young lawyers or young researchers) who have the means to pay for information, the few paying customers have to pay more. Disguising price hikes with features that may be of little or no interest to a user is a marketing play. The reason a person uses a specialized information service is to get on point information. Fluff is easy. The hard core information is the purpose of the user’s search. Marketing won’t win the lawyer or biologist who won’t or can’t pay for the for fee service. Put the effort into the unique information, not lights in the wheel wells and 20 inch chrome wheels.
- As I pointed out in my March column for Information World Review, putting junk like real time search results in a Google or Bing result set makes me do extra work. If I want specialized types of content, I want to use a specialized system for that information. I search a system to get the best that system has to offer. A bunch of results from different services does not help me. I suspect that if I saw a bunch of odds and ends when I was searching a for fee service, I would be really angry. Google is free. I don’t care what that outfit does. When I pay for a commercial service’s content, spare me the crap from unvetted Web sites. I can do the research myself, and I don’t want training wheels.
- The notion of displaying related content is one of those short cuts that people under 30 really like. Government managers like software that tells folks what they need to know. The idea is that software should eliminate the need for browsing, reading, and filtering. Yep, that’s a great recipe for success. So called experts don’t know the history of online and give talks that describe stuff that won’t work as planned. The wheel gets reinvented again and again. The same errors are repeated with numbing regularity.
The addled goose ventures out less and less. The world of commercial online is too frightening. The buzzwords strike me and make me even more addled. The titans scare me. The future is going to be shaped by people who mix up marketing and truly useful professional information. Yikes.
Stephen E Arnold, March 7, 2010
So I got paid for the talk and I got some food. This is a compensated post. Notice, however, that I did not include any links. Why? Mention these companies pushing deck chairs around the deck of the Steamship General Slocum.
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Thank you for essential article. Where else could anyone get that kind of information in such a complete way of writing? I have a presentation incoming week, and I am on the lookout for such information.