Friday, November 19, 2004

Google Unveils a Search Engine Focused on Scholarly Materials By JEFFREY R. YOUNG Printer friendly E-mail article Subscribe Order reprints HEADLINES   Google unveils a search engine focused on scholarly materials Congress passes supercomputing bill that could help academic research Colorado professor's article on American-Indian students is criticized as offensive Students backed Senator Kerry by wider margin than did other young people, studies find This just in: Democrats outnumber Republicans on American faculties, studies find U. of Vermont pays $15,000 to 2 students who were arrested in pro-marijuana rally 5 academics are among 16 winners of national humanities and arts medals Professor wins National Book Award for nonfiction In a move that some scholars see as a boon for research and others say could help make libraries obsolete, Google on Thursday unveiled a search engine that focuses on academic materials. The new tool, called Google Scholar, is a version of the company's popular search service. The new search engine limits its results to "scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts, and technical reports," according to a company statement. Google officials say they have the cooperation of a broad range of academic publishers, library groups, scholarly societies, and colleges, though the officials would not name the participants. Google Scholar searches the full text of most of the documents it indexes, but in some cases the results point to articles or texts that can be seen only for a fee or with a subscription. In most such cases, users can see a free abstract of the article to decide whether they want to seek out or buy it. Some results also point to other works that cite a given article -- a useful tool for researchers. The service combines many features the company has developed in partnerships with colleges and library groups. Google officials say it builds on their work with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 16 other universities to make scholarly papers from the institutions more accessible in search engines (The Chronicle, April 23). The new search tool also includes records from the Open WorldCat project, which makes library-catalog records available as searchable documents. That effort is a partnership of Google and OCLC Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit library organization (The Chronicle, May 21). Google officials also would not say how they determine exactly what material counts as scholarly, or how Google Scholar decides which results are more relevant than others. But a company statement does say that it "takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared, and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature." Such secrecy does not sit well with many librarians, who are accustomed to using databases that are carefully labeled. And some librarians worry that students will stop using library databases, journals, and books, many of which are not indexed by Google. "If they think they can get what they need from Google, the odds are slim that they will bother with library resources at all," said two librarians on a blog called Resource Shelf. But the librarians, Shirl Kennedy, base librarian at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., and Gary Price, an information-research consultant in the Washington suburbs, praised the service, saying that "this is something that should have been around for years." Unlike most scholarly databases, Google Scholar does not allow users to customize searches or limit the kinds of results they receive. Anurag Acharya, an engineer for Google who led the Google Scholar project, said in an interview that the search tool was released in a beta, or preliminary, version, and that it would be refined. Some features for narrowing searches will be added in the future, said Mr. Acharya. One feature being considered, he said, is a way to limit results by the date of publication. "We will gradually refine it once we figure out which things are important." But Mr. Acharya said that a simple search box that returns relevant results would serve most scholars better than a complex set of choices to limit a search. "With a good ranking algorithm, the need for limiting is less significant than it used to be," he said. "It is if the ranking is not good that I have to increasingly refine my search until I get exactly what I want." Google currently includes no advertising in Google Scholar search results, though Mr. Acharya would not say whether advertising might be added in the future. Some experts say Google introduced the new services to maintain its lead in the increasingly competitive search-engine business. Just last week, Microsoft announced a new search engine, and Yahoo has recently renewed its focus on searching. Most academics are likely to try out Google Search by typing in their own names, to see which of their publications are included. That was the case for Barbara R. Fister, an academic librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, in Saint Peter, Minn. Doing so might be "navel gazing," she said, but it's also a good way to test the system. "Everybody's going to Google themselves immediately." Background articles from The Chronicle: Libraries Aim to Widen Google's Eyes (5/21/2004) Scientific Publisher to Offer Search Engine for Article Abstracts (5/14/2004) Google Tests Search Engine for Colleges' Scholarly Materials (4/23/2004)