- BRS/Search
BRS/Search is a full-text database and information retrieval system. BRS/Search uses a fully-inverted indexing system to store, locate, and retrieve unstructured data. It was the search engine that in 1977 powered Bibliographic Retrieval Services (BRS) commercial operations with 20 databases (including the first national commercial availability of
MEDLINE ); it has changed ownership several times during its development and is currently sold as Livelink ECM Discovery Server byOpen Text Corporation .Early development
Development on what was to become BRS began as Biomedical Communications Network (
BCN ) at theState University of New York , Albany (SUNY). BCN, which went online in 1968, provided on-line access to nine databases, includingMEDLINE and BIOSIS PREVIEWS, to large universities and medical schools primarily in the Northeast of the USA. State funding for the project was withdrawn in 1975, and Bibliographic Retrieval Services (BRS) was formed as a non-profit concern the following year. It was incorporated in May 1976 as a for-profit corporation with Ron Quake as president, Jan Egeland as vice president in charge of marketing and training, and Lloyd Palmer as vice president of systems. [ [http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_4/DATA/1982/8219.PDF] US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment (1982), MEDLARS and Health Information Policy. ISBN 1428924248]BRS commercial operations
In December 1976, the First BRS User Meeting was held in Syracuse, N.Y. and by January 1977 BRS started commercial operations with 20 databases (including the first national commercial availability of
MEDLINE ) and 9 million records, using modified IBM STAIRS (STorage And Information Retrieval System) software,Telenet for telecommunications, and timesharing mainframe computers of Carrier Corporation. In October 1980 BRS was sold by Egeland and Quake to Indian Head, Inc., a subsidiary of the Dutch company Thyssen-Bornemisza Corporation. [Online Before The Internet, Part 7:Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories: BRS—An Interview with Jan Egeland [http://www.infotoday.com/SEARCHER/jul04/ardito_bjorner.shtml] ] [Online Before The Internet, Part 8:Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories: BRS—An Interview with Jan Egeland [http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/nov04/ardito_bjorner.shtml] ]1989 - 1993
In 1989
Robert Maxwell acquired BRS and the BRS/Search software, he announced the planned incorporation of the ORBIT Search Service and BRS Information Technologies and renamed the whole group Maxwell Online, Inc. At that time BRS Information Technologies were serving the medical and academic library marketplace with over 150 databases. Maxwell later bought the publishing company Macmillan and put Maxwell Online under Macmillan. In the same year BRS/LINK (hypertext connection of databases; first application delivering full text) was announced.At the time of Robert Maxwell’s death in 1991, Macmillan brought in Andrew Gregory to represent the company during the 2 years that Maxwell’s affairs were being settled and to prepare Maxwell Online to be able to sell the components. Maxwell Online shortly thereafter underwent yet another name change, this time to InfoPro Technologies.
Dataware Technologies ownership of BRS/SEARCH
Early in 1994, InfoPro Technologies, a subsidiary of MHC Inc. (holding company for Macmillan Inc.), the former Maxwell Online service, sold off all its subsidiaries. ORBIT Search Services went to the French-owned Questel, the dial-up BRS Search Services to CD Plus Technologies (later to become OVID), and BRS Software Products (including BRS/SEARCH) to Dataware Technologies. Almost up to the end of InfoPro Technologies, BRS Software had been the fastest growing segment of the company. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4328/is_199501/ai_n15084021] Searcher: "Whatever happened to BRS software?", interview with Kurt Mueller, CEO of Dataware Technologies Inc. (January 1995)]
At the 14th BRS North American Users Group Conference in
1999 , Dave Schubmehl of Dataware Technologies presented a paper in which he stated "The purpose of this presentation is to update BRS users on upcoming releases of BRS/Search, NetAnswer, and other Dataware products. BRS/Search 7.0 will include features specifically requested by customers, as well as other enhancements. Earlier this year, Dataware acquired Sovereign Hill Software, makers of InQuery. In light of that acquisition, and Dataware's other development projects, we'll look at Dataware's plans for all products, including BRS/Search and NetAnswer." [ [http://www.usc.edu/users/karl/BRSNAUG/Conferences/1999a/Papers/] 14th BRS North American Users Group Conference(August 25-27, 1999)]Open Text acquisition of BRS/Search
In 2001 BRS/Search was acquired by
Open Text and became [http://www.opentext.com/2/sol-products/sol-pro-knowledge-management/pro-ll-discovery-server.htm LiveLink ECM Discovery Server] [ [http://www.thefreelibrary.com/LeadingSide,+Inc.+Sells+Search+and+Retrieval+Product+Business+to+Open...-a067265168| LeadingSide, Inc. Sells Search and Retrieval Product Business to Open Text] ]Open Text still supports both BRS/Search and NetAnswer. Active BRS/Search and NetAnswer installations include the public Web patent full-text database operated by the United States Patent and Trademark Office at [http://www.uspto.gov/patft/ USPTO Web Patent Databases] . BRS/Search and NetAnswer are also used in-house for searches performed by patent examiners and public patent searchers at the USPTO.
The core BRS/Search technology in the Open Text portfolio was augmented with other capabilities through various acquisitions. For example, Dataware's acquisition of Soveriegn-Hill brought InQuery, “a probabilistic information retrieval system using an inference network” [http://www.cs.umass.edu/csinfo/newsletter/images/sigbits_spring97.pdf , which was developed by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval] out of the [http://ciir.cs.umass.edu/ UMass CIIR] and into the marketplace. A [http://www.opentext.com/2/sol-products/pro-allproducts/pro-rebranded-products-table.htm product re-branding table] shows the range of products, their old names and their new names.
InQuery is a concept search engine that uses noun phrases, parts of speech and other co-occurrence relationships in overlapping passages of text rather than single term inverted indexes of single words in documents.
Open Text's portfolio has grown to include Hummingbird Content Management and has always included BASIS
2003
BRS/Search North America User's Group (BRSNAUG) website with a Jun 08 2003 date listed the following features for BRS/Search. The BRSNAUG also disincorporated in 2003. Cross-references to BRS/Search on the WWW point to Open Text Livelink.
References
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