ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted Search Some examples of applied faceted search on websites developed by the EP Jerry Hilbert European Parliament

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search - Definition Faceted search, also called faceted navigation or faceted browsing, is a technique for accessing a collection of information represented using a faceted classification, allowing users to explore by filtering available information. A faceted classification system allows the assignment of multiple classifications to an object, enabling the classifications to be ordered in multiple ways, rather than in a single, pre-determined, taxonomic order. Each facet typically corresponds to the possible values of a property common to a set of digital objects. Facets are often derived by analysis of the text of an item using entity extraction techniques or from pre-existing fields in the database such as author, descriptor, language, and format. This approach permits existing web-pages, product descriptions or articles to have this extra metadata extracted and presented as a navigation facet Source: Wikipedia

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search - Technology Different search engines offer nowadays the possibility for faceted search. The EP uses SolR, based on LUCENE. Solr is an open source enterprise search platform from the Apache Lucene project. Its major features include powerful full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, dynamic clustering, database integration, and rich document (e.g., Word, PDF) handling. Providing distributed search and index replication, Solr is highly scalable. Solr is written in Java and runs as a standalone full-text search server within a servlet container such as Apache Tomcat. Solr uses the Lucene Java search library at its core for full-text indexing and search, and has REST-like HTTP/XML and JSON APIs that make it easy to use from virtually any programming language. Solr's powerful external configuration allows it to be tailored to almost any type of application without Java coding, and it has an extensive plugin architecture when more advanced customization is required. Source: Wikipedia

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search - Technology How is Lucene/Solr used? XML IN – XML OUT XML IN: Data is structured in XML when submitting for indexation XML OUT: Data is returned as XML (including facet details) as the result of a search Also, configuration of the search engine for free text - number of terms to match - relevance of the terms, according to the field they are associated to

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites In the coming slides examples of faceted search as applied on websites developed by the EP will be shown for: - The Legislative Observatory of the EP - Public Register of documents - IPEX - ECPRD

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites OEIL Legislative Observatory of the EP (old version of the site)

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites OEIL: Legislative Observatory OEIL contains legislative, budgetary, non-legislative and internal parliamentary procedures, such as: Co-decision, consultation and assent procedure budgetary and discharge procedures own-initiative reports by the European Parliament appointments, waivers of immunity and changes to the Rules of Procedure (i.e. internal EP procedures) resolutions and recommendations adopted by the European Parliament documents forwarded for information from the Commission (during the last 9 months).

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites OEIL: Legislative Observatory Situation before implementing faceted search

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites OEIL: Legislative Observatory

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Challenges for applying facets in OEIL: (1)Sequence of facets Parliamentary term, … (2)Protocol order for returned matches in the facets Political groups, Commission DGs, etc. (3)Facets with huge results of additional criteria Rapporteurs (possibly a few hundred) (4)Facets for structured keywords list Legal Basis (Treaty to Article) (5) Length of words Faceted search – EP websites OEIL: Legislative Observatory

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites OEIL: Legislative Observatory

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Where facets can help out: (1)Date range searches (2)Structured references of procedures or documents Faceted search – EP websites OEIL: Legislative Observatory

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites Public Register of documents

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites Public Register Documents accessible through the Register 5 main categories of documents Parliamentary activity EP general information From other institutions and Member States Documents from third parties Budgetary procedure 125 types of documents References Documents (All LV) List defined by EP Bureau ReferencesDocuments December December December December

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites Public Register Public Register / Metadata Usually for each document : reference number title dates summary authorities authors relations

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites Public Register Situation before implementing faceted search

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites Public Register Situation before implementing faceted search

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites Public Register

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites Public Register

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites Public Register

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites IPEX Interparliamentary EU Information Exchange (old version of the site)

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 The IPEX Database contains a complete catalog of Commission documents from From each Commission document users can click on "Related dossiers" and from there access national scrutiny pages. Each national scrutiny page contains documents from the individual national parliaments relating to the specific Commission document or legislative procedure. IPEX also hosts a calendar of interparliamentary cooperation which contains information concerning all interparliamentary meetings relating to the European Union. Faceted search IPEX: Interparliamentary EU Information Exchange

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search IPEX: Interparliamentary EU Information Exchange

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search IPEX: Interparlamentary EU Information exchange

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Challenge: How to guarantee that the result lists presents the information in its context Faceted search IPEX: Interparlamentary EU Information exchange Dossier Documents Scrutinies Private forums

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search IPEX: Interparlamentary EU Information exchange

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search – EP websites ECPRD European Center for Parliamentary Research and Documentation (private site)

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search ECPRD: European Center for Parliamentary Research and Documentation

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search ECPRD: European Center for Parliamentary Research and Documentation Situation before implementing faceted search

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search ECPRD: European Center for Parliamentary Research and Documentation

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search ECPRD: European Center for Parliamentary Research and Documentation

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 For the next release an extension to the current (new) search implementation is foreseen: Using the key facet for Thesaurus entries as a privileged entry point to find relevant objects on the site (i.e. Taking benefit of XML structured output of facettes to use it as a way to navigate to the good records) Faceted search ECPRD: European Center for Parliamentary Research and Documentation

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search Conclusions

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search Conclusions - One size don’t fit it all - Advanced search may be required for pre-selection - Challenges show when large result lists are returned - Site wide searches require to recall the context of the object - Analysis starts when indexing, not when producing result lists

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search Conclusions - Easily comprehensible and powerfull drill up&down feature - Flexible to adapt to future queries -No ‘0 result lists’ when drilling - Statistical follow of ‘to expect’ results

ECPRD seminar on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011 Faceted search Thanks for your attention! Questions?