Making Search Work: Implementing Web, Intranet and Enterprise Search

Citation

Luisa Doldi, M. (2007), "Making Search Work: Implementing Web, Intranet and Enterprise Search", The Electronic Library, Vol. 25 No. 6, pp. 791-792. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470710837218

Searching must work: this is the main message of this book, which focuses on making searching work for an organisation, be it on the corporate website or in an intranet. Achieving this is not easy, considering that 80 per cent of the information created by an organisation is unstructured, that it often has several formats, that it must answer different questions for different people, that it has very different users with different needs, and that sometimes it must be kept confidential. Further, the rate of information growth is amazing, externally and even internally to the organisation. Yet, the topic of search is not yet well covered by specific literature.

However, the result of a search process can have a significant impact on the business performances of a company. Not having effective search solutions could mean that work is duplicated, time wasted, market opportunities missed, compliance audits failed, and visitors go to other sites. Hence, the principal aim of the book is to provide information and advice to anyone tasked with implementing or improving their organisation's search applications.

At the start of the book some basic principles of search are discussed: information management (chapter 2); search appliances and main search vendors (chapter 3); and price performances (chapter 4).

Then, the author addresses several aspects a user has to consider when starting an enterprise search project: the kind of search engine (chapter 5); optimization of search performances (chapter 6); desktop search functions (chapter 8); managing internal information flood (chapter 11); and multilingual search possibilities (chapter 12).

Special attention is dedicated to the topic of usability (chapter 7), defined here as a measure of the ease with which someone can make use of a system to undertake specific tasks. Although there is a vast literature on usability, there is very little advice on usability issues regarding Search. But also in this specific field of application, the gold rule must be: never forget the user's needs or even the best technical solution will be a flop.

The book's structure itself embodies important principles of usability: each chapter begins with an overview of the addressed topic and closes with a list of further readings. The texts are well structured, enhancing the most important concepts. A glossary of all specific terms is given at the end of the book. The book assumes no technical knowledge. Each aspect is described with a flowing style, avoiding jargon. It is a valuable compendium, especially considering that it covers topics otherwise inadequately discussed in the literature. It is strongly recommended as a preliminary reading to anyone tasked with implementing or improving search applications in an organisation.