As of January, 2012, this site is no longer being updated, due to work and health issues
Avi Rappoport is a leading authority on Enterprise Search Engines for web sites, intranets and topical portals. She combines research in information retrieval with years in the software industry to bring a practical and straightforward approach to web search and navigation issues. She evaluates search engines for features, functionality and usability, with an emphasis on find the best way to meet end-user needs.
Contact Avi: use the contact form or send .
Consulting
Avi has been analyzing enterprise search engines and providing search consulting since 1998. She consults in every stage of search engine analysis, from problem-definition through product choice, implementation, usability testing, to long-term maintenance and log analysis. In addition to consulting, she is active in information architecture, usability and information retrieval organizations and advises students from the Berkeley School of Information Management and Studies.
Site/Enterprise Needs Analysis and Search Implementations
- Kaiser Permanente - team designed and implemented complete intranet and sub-site search engine replacement, integration with IBM WCM, wrote scripts for search analytics
- Kresge Foundation - implementation of site search engine
- Ernst & Young - enterprise search analytics project
- KCM - information needs analysis, evaluation of the PostgreSQL full-text search module, and knowledge management best practices
- ProQuest - extensive research on current data content & interchange standards
- Yodle - research and recommendations for geographic local search using the Solr Lucene search engine.
- Cengage - faceted metadata search consulting
- United States Library of Congress - extensive analysis of current and future search requirements, metadata integration, user experience improvements, and recommendations.
- Librarian's Index to the Internet - work with programmer to implement faceted metadata search and browse.
- VeriSign - responsible for search engine for main site, international sites, intranets and sales extranet, extensive analytics
- Discovery Education - analysis and discussion of multimedia search and architecture issues.
- Virtuoso - analysis and consulting for database-backed travel site.
- Hewlett-Packard - extensive analysis and recommendations for very large intranet search.
- Blue Shield of California - search engine requirements analysis and implementation.
- QwestDex - online yellow pages faceted metadata search RFI, RFP and recommendation.
- MIT - site search advice
- Proctor & Gamble - intranet search evaluation assistance
- Librarian's Index to the Internet - search user interface and spellchecker
- Hewlett-Packard - log file analysis and search implementation analysis
- National Cancer Institute - help choosing a portal search engine
- Epson America - research on filtering engines
- AlterNet - search engine for a growing topical portal
- 4D Inc., WebSTAR division - analysis of search engine code library to license
- Qode / NeoMedia - e-commerce online catalog
- Scient - search interface, content integration for health portal
- FirstDoor.com - search engine analysis
- DomainLock - search engine analysis
- KnowIt.com - search engine analysis
- McKinsey - portal search engine advice
- Fair, Isaac - intranet search recommendations
- Salon - search analysis and implementation of interface and functional improvements
- UltimateOffice.com - search engine analysis
- GreatEntertaining.com - ecommerce site search analysis, log analysis
- Working Assets - search engine analysis
- WinStar Office.com - due diligence analysis of search products
- ZotGroup - search engine analysis
- ZDNet - due diligence on search engine
- ProjectCool - search engine analysis
- HealthCentral - search engine recommendations
- iXL - analysis of MP3 file search needs
- DNA Files - search engine implementation
- WorldTrek Odyssey - search engine implementation
Industry Clients: white papers and analysis
- SLI Systems
- Google Search Appliance
- Siderean Faceted Metadata Search (formerly bpallen Teapot)
- Ultraseek (when developed by Infoseek and then Inktomi)
- MondoSoft
- AltaVista
- Convera (formerly Excalibur)
- Ripfire (acquired by Plumtree)
- Searchbutton.com (acquired by MondoSoft)
- Maxum (then developer of Phantom)
- Atomz (now WebSideStory Search)
- Utopy
- Ditto.com
- Cambridge Parallel Processing
See bibliography for over thirty five conference presentations, articles and technical documents since 1998
Previous Software Industry Experience
Product Manager for StarNine (bought by 4D Inc): responsible for development and release of web design tool; list server; email client, server and gateway packages. Documented and tested the WebSTAR web server.
Publications Coordinator for Metrowerks (bought by Motorola) : directing a team documenting compilers, editors, debuggers, libraries and other development tools, as both user guides and reference manuals. Published in several formats of online and printed documentation.
Software Development and Support for Niles Software (now part of ISIResearchSoft) designed, managed, coded, documented and supported the EndNote bibliography program.
Education
University of California, Berkeley, School of Library and Information Studies, Master of Arts, December 1987. (University Fellowship, 1986.) Member of the Alumni Association Board of Directors, 1999.
University of California, Berkeley, School of Letters and Sciences, B.A. in Medieval Studies (Individual Major), with Honors, December 1985.
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