Search System Integrating Library Holdings and Access Links
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional search engines fail to index and provide access to documents held in libraries with restricted access, limiting users' ability to find relevant information within these collections, even when users are affiliated with the libraries.
Innovation Solution
A search system that integrates library holding information and user affiliation data to generate an access link for documents in libraries, allowing users with appropriate access to link directly to restricted documents through a link resolver.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If conventional search engines index all documents, then search completeness is improved, but access control and security are compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the document corpus into public and restricted portions, with separate indexing strategies. The search engine indexes all documents for completeness but applies access control layers that segment results based on user credentials, allowing both search completeness and access control to coexist
Solution Approach 2:
An intermediary access control system is introduced between the search engine and document delivery. This mediator verifies user credentials and permissions, allowing the search engine to maintain complete indexing while the intermediary enforces access control policies before granting document access
2Ease of operation
If search engines provide direct access to library documents, then user convenience is improved, but library access policies are violated
Solution Approach 1:
The library's access control system serves as an intermediary between the search engine and document access. The search engine provides convenient search results, but the intermediary library system verifies user permissions and mediates document access, maintaining both user convenience and policy enforcement
Solution Approach 2:
User affiliation with libraries is determined in advance through preliminary authentication. The system pre-establishes user permissions and affiliations before document access is requested, allowing convenient search results to be generated while access policies are already verified and enforced
3Loss of information
If search engines index restricted access documents, then information availability is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The indexing system is segmented into two layers: a comprehensive index that includes all documents for information availability, and an access control layer that manages complexity by handling permission verification separately. This segmentation allows complete information availability without proportionally increasing overall system complexity
Solution Approach 2:
Access control functionality is extracted as a separate module from the core search engine indexing system. This extraction allows the search engine to maintain simple, efficient indexing while the extracted access control module handles the complexity of permission management independently
Data Source
AI summary
An online search system generates an index of documents using index information received from a library. Some documents have restricted access; some documents may not be available online. The search system provides links to documents in the library as well as other sites based on a search, and may include link resolvers received from the library. The search system provides access links to the link resolvers if an identifier, such as a user identification or IP address, matches an affiliation list from the library.