Search solu­tions provider Deep Web Tech­nolo­gies, US, has launched an updated inter­face for the Defense Tech­ni­cal Infor­ma­tion Center’s new DTIC Online research por­tal (http://multisearch.dtic.mil). DTIC is part of the US’ Depart­ment of Defense (DOD). The inter­face, known as Mul­ti­Search, offers four defence search chan­nels from a sin­gle drop-down menu, allow­ing users to access a col­lec­tion of sci­en­tific and defence-related resources in one simul­ta­ne­ous search. The search employs the lat­est ver­sion of Deep Web Tech­nolo­gies’ Explorit Research Accel­er­a­tor, which is seen to pro­vide ‘smart’ clus­ter­ing, ency­clo­pe­dia side­bars from Wikipedia, and EurekAlert! sci­ence news.

DTIC sup­ports the DOD and its com­mu­nity by cen­tral­is­ing sci­en­tific, tech­ni­cal and related defence-information ser­vices, data­bases and sys­tems. Its new DTIC Online sig­nif­i­cantly expands the breadth of infor­ma­tion scanned and retrieved with its four search chan­nels: DOD web­sites, DTIC Pub­lic Sci­en­tific and Tech­ni­cal Infor­ma­tion, the DTIC Web­site, and Fed­eral Sci­en­tific and Tech­ni­cal Infor­ma­tion. Mul­ti­Search also includes a fed­er­ated search of other fed­er­ated search web­sites, includ­ing Scitopia.org and WorldWideScience.org — both pow­ered by the Explorit Research Accel­er­a­tor. It there­fore is pro­jected to con­sol­i­date a num­ber of advanced search engines within one search, deliv­er­ing results users might never have uncovered.

The upgraded Mul­ti­Search por­tal adds new fea­tures that seek to enrich the user expe­ri­ence and value of research. By tak­ing advan­tage of Explorit’s ‘smart clus­ter­ing,’ Mul­ti­Search pro­vides relevance-ranked clus­ters that allow users to see their results organ­ised by topic. It also retrieves and dis­plays entries from Wikipedia and EurekAlert! that com­ple­ment the search expe­ri­ence. Explorit deliv­ers not only rel­e­vant results, but path­ways and con­text to guide users to more rel­e­vant search results.

Deep Web’s fed­er­ated search tech­nol­ogy is pro­jected to enable fee-based or pro­pri­etary con­tent to be searched pub­licly on the Inter­net, with­out giv­ing it away. This con­tent is not search­able by pub­lic search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

DTIC Online was cre­ated specif­i­cally for the defence com­mu­nity. Mul­ti­Search can be accessed from the pull-down menu by select­ing ‘Fed­eral S&T’ or by going directly to (http://multisearch.dtic.mil).The search is free and much of the con­tent is avail­able at no cost. Some con­tent — like that accessed through Sci­topia — can be pur­chased on a pay-per-view basis or accessed by a subscription.