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About the NAP "Web Search Builder"
In August of 2005 we inaugurated a new research tool to users of the NAP website, the "Web Search Builder." This tool allows you to "pair up" key terms to send to Google, Yahoo, MSN, and the National Academies Press library.

Paired terms provide much more targeted searching, and often yield results of significant value to your research. You can add selected terms to the mix via the checkboxes on the right, and can add your own new terms via the form above that column.

The key terms in the right-hand column have been derived via algorithmic analysis of each chapter, which we have developed in-house. It is more than simple term frequency, but rather uses lexical and semantic analysis approaches currently under patent review. Though far from perfect, it provides a great working basis to develop precise combinations of terms to assist your Web research.

The same underlying approach can be seen in the "Active Skim" for every chapter, which can be accessed via the link beneath the search pairings titled "skim this chapter." Active Skim uses the key terms to identify the key segment from every page of the chapter, providing a workable skim view, while enabling the user to actively select other key segments by clicking on a key term in the list.

Note: some of our publications only have rough OCRed text -- machine-read from page images -- which may lead to unpredictable typos and errors. Also, we have found that several versions of Internet Explorer for the Mac (no longer supported by Microsoft) responds poorly to the Javascript upon which our active links depend. All other Mac browsers (Safari, Konqueror, Firefox) have no trouble.

Backend Info:
  • Top terms for each chapter are identified and evaluated for significance within the chapter algorithmically, from ASCII text
  • Metadata contained in book-specific XML files
Frontend Info:
  • Perl (on a Linux box) prepares and presents javascript-enhanced HTML pages via CGI.
  • Once loaded for a chapter, all processing happens within the client's browser via javascript, rather than on a server.
The underlying Web Search Builder architecture and approach was invented by Michael Jensen based on lexical analysis systems currently under patent review. Visual look designed by Sara Sandhu; usability design by Megan Ellinger.

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