Not sure when (or why) this happened, but I just noticed that my Faceted Search book is now almost half off at Amazon, selling for $12.94. Not that it was ever that extravagant a purchase, but at this price you have 48% fewer excuses not to buy your own copy! And, speaking of Amazon, I would appreciate if folks who have read the book could take a moment to post a review there.
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Faceted Search Book: Now At Half Price!
The Noisy Channel 
5 replies on “Faceted Search Book: Now At Half Price!”
Amazon.com won’t let me post any more reviews; they consider me as a non-customer because I buy my stuff from Amazon.de. Silly. So here is my review of your book:
Daniel Tunkelang’s book is a concise introduction to the area of faceted search, its foundations in information science, current research, and practical concerns. The book starts with a whirlwind tour of information science from Aristotle’s classification to Google’s PageRank algorithm. The first part ends with a very short section on faceted search. At this point, faceted search seems so basic and obvious that you wonder why it has only been widely accepted in the last decade. The answer comes in the next chapter, which explains why faceted search is computationally demanding. The last part of the book mentions a number of practical issues in connection with organizing the data, efficient processing and the design of an effective user interface.
The book is rather short (79 pages, including glossary, author’s biography, references, 23 screenshots and 7 blank pages), but it does cover the main points and is very clearly written. It is a pleasant and easy read, it took me less than 3 hours to read from cover to cover (your mileage may vary). It is surprising that Tunkelang, with his extensive experience in this area, does not have more to say about the subject. Maybe his position as Chief Scientist of Endeca does not allow him to go into more detail and give away more of the methodology how to actually build a successful faceted search solution.
The book is great as a first introduction to the field, but I would be looking forward to an expanded second edition.
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Gregor, thanks for taking the time to write this! I’ll try to aggregate this and a few other reviews (like this one and this one) into one page on this blog.
To respond to the criticism, you are right that there is room for much more on the subject. To some degree I was constrained by the format–these lectures are supposed to be short. Regardless, I do look forward to diving into more detail either in a follow-up edition or some other format. My role at Endeca does come with an NDA, but there is much I am able (and eager) to discuss freely.
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Daniel — I recently read Faceted Search and posted a review on The Intellog Blog. We are ramping up some work on faceted search, and found the book very useful.
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Terence, thank you for posting the review–and for letting me and readers here know about it! I’m glad you enjoyed the book, and I wish you luck in your faceted search work!
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I paid full price and it was worth every cent!
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