[sc-discuss] Google Scholar is Now Open to All Libraries
Yong Liu
classicalliberalism at gmail.com
Wed May 11 10:11:26 EDT 2005
Google Scholar is Now Open to All Libraries
By Gary Price
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=1694
Today, the "small" Google Scholar pilot that went live in February –
allowing about 30 libraries and institutions to provide direct links
to articles found in the Google Scholar database – is being expanded.
Now, ANY library or institution that has the proper link resolving
software can hook into Google Scholar and provide direct links to
articles found via a GS search. This is a service the library
community has been asking for since Google Scholar launched last
November. You can find all of the details here. Google also is
releasing a help page for the service.
Additionally, Google Scholar has increased the number of journals and
books to which it can link directly. Previously, only articles with
DOIs (digital object identifiers) or PMIDs (PubMed unique identifier)
would work. Now, after collaboration with many link resolver vendors,
Google is able to gain access and crawl local holdings information for
a specific institution or library, to help provide direct links to
articles. In other words, DOIs are not required.
Google Scholar developer Anurag Acharya told ResourceShelf that most
libraries should be able to turn on a configuration option in their
link resolver and be up and running in a short amount of time. He also
told us that each participating library will appear as a selectable
affiliation via a search on the preferences page. This will allow
Google Scholar users to take advantage of these direct links when they
are accessing the database off-campus or via a computer that is not on
the campus network.
Finally, Acharya alerted us to a change on Google Scholar results
pages. Now, if the searcher's preferred library has access to an
article found via Google Scholar, a direct link to the material will
receive better placement on the search results page. The link will now
be found directly next to the title of the article or book and, in
some cases, made even more visible by appearing in a different color
than other parts of the entry.
Google Scholar remains in beta. Here's the official announcement from
the Google Blog.
Google has also unveiled an FAQ page for publishers.
Google deserves kudos for opening up this service to all libraries.
However, even as the Google Scholar database continues to grow, we
still don't know precisely when or how often it's updated, the lag
time (if any) for material to get into the database, and other
important facts like what will or will not be included in the
database. It would also be great if Google could provide a list of
sources to which they are providing access.
Of course, many of the impressive features found at CiteSeer and
SmealSearch (two EXCELLENT databases for discipline-specific scholarly
material on the web) would also be welcome. If you've never used these
databases, they are well worth your attention.
BTW, I asked if Google Print content would be added to Google Scholar
sometime soon – a logical step. The company had no comment about the
possible inclusion of this material.
What we find an interesting coincidence is that while Google builds
this monster database containing "scholarly" info from many
disciplines, specialized search tools (what the search industry calls
"verticals") are growing very rapidly in both exposure and usage.
True, Google Scholar is in many ways a vertical. However, it still
doesn't offer the searchability that a specialized database (which
libraries have always offered) can provide – e.g., versus a massive
database with little control.
ResourceShelf still believes in the federated search concept where
disparate databases may be searched simultaneously. The end user,
instructor, librarian, etc., chooses appropriate databases at the time
of the search. Tools facilitating database selection are also coming
online. And many pieces of federated technology allow the searcher to
take advantage of the advanced features a database might offer via its
native interface.
Finally, info pros do recognize the importance of Google Scholar and
other online databases (often fee-based) that go beyond a simple open
web search. However, just "us" knowing about these tools is not
enough. We need to let people know they're out there and can
potentially save them time and effort. We've said it before: People
can't use what they don't know about. Yes, some of the information in
specialized databases can also be found on the web and accessed via a
Google, Yahoo, MSN, or Ask Jeeves search. However, just because
material is "in" a database, doesn't mean that it will surface in a
web search where the searcher uses a couple of terms and only looks at
the first few results. Which is also why dynamic clustering is a
valuable tool and can help the typical searcher deal with the "long
tail." Clustering company Vivisimo says its technology offers
"selective ignorance."
Obviously, info pros have a role to serve by teaching end users how to
take full advantage of the search technologies that are available.
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Yong Liu
(e) classicalliberalism at gmail.com
(w) http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/freespeech/
http://freespeech.civiblog.org
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://del.icio.us/yongliu
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