[EAS] Google Scholar

[pjk]

Subject:   Google Scholar

Dear Colleagues -

Called to my attention last week by my colleague Prof. Bob
Grober, and the last issues of TOURBUS and NewsScan Daily, is quite
an interesting new Google development <http://scholar.google.com/>. 

Google seems to have penetrated quite deeply into what was formerly
called the "deep" or "hidden" Web, on which I commented on EAS-INFO
in 2001 at <http://www.yale.edu/engineering/eng-info/msg00962.html>.
(Please note that this is a URL in an old archive, the newer one is
accessed from the URL at the bottom of this mailing but is off-line
for a few days, and that the <www.brightplanet.com> paper referred
to in my 2001 mailing has now moved to
<http://www.brightplanet.com/technology/deepweb.asp>.) 

In pursuing the <scholar.google.com> citations under
author:kindlmann, somewhere along the way I seemlessly entered the
domain accessible to me only as part of Yale's licensing agreements.
Nice for me, but it makes it harder to predict how comprehensively
it will work for you outside Yale.

Here is what TOURBUS (18 Nov 04) had to say about the new Google
service:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Google Scholar
--------------

Google released a new search site Wednesday called Google Scholar
that lets you search "specifically for scholarly literature,
including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts
and technical reports from all broad areas of research."

You can find Google Scholar at

     http://scholar.google.com/

Google Scholar supports most of Google's regular query modifiers [for
more information about Google query modifiers, check out my free
Google 201 PDF handout at http://tinyurl.com/4hhn9 ].  Google Scholar
also introduces a new query modifier:

     author:authorname

How do you use the new author: query modifier?  Well, here are three
examples of it in work:

     author:stack "The effect of country music on suicide"

     author:Balasubramaniam "Coordination Modes in the Multisegmental
     Dynamics of Hula Hooping"

     author:crispen "Social stress in pregnant squirrel monkeys"

Google Scholar is brand new and is still in beta.  In other words,
the folks at Google are still working out the bugs and the database
is kind of small.  But from what little I have seen so far, I'm
impressed.

For more information about Google Scholar, check out

     http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------
and NewsScan Daily, 18 November 2004
------------------------------------

GOOGLE DEBUTS SCHOLARLY SEARCH SERVICE
      Google is adding a new search service geared toward the needs
of  academic and scientific researchers, offering a central starting
point for  scholarly literature like peer-reviewed papers, books,
abstracts and  technical reports. The new search tool, accessible at
scholar.google.com,  is the result of collaboration with a number of
scientific and academic  publishers, including ACM, Nature, IEEE and
OCLC. The new service initially  will be advertisement-free, but
company executives say that will change.  "The commercial reason for
doing this is that you can target areas with  high-quality,
high-payback ads," says John Sack, director of Stanford 
University's HighWire Press. "An advertisement that goes next to an
article  on cloning techniques is probably going to be for services
that are pretty  expensive." SearchEngineWatch editor Danny Sullivan
says Google's latest  move is "a significant step forward," adding
that Google likely will have  competition soon from Yahoo and
others. "We will continue to see an  explosion of vertical search
engines like this," he notes, referring to  search services that
focus on special collections. (New York Times 18 Nov 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/technology/18google.html>

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Much as it was once fashionable to opine on the likelihood of
Amazon.com's demise under the threat of Barnes & Noble  Web
competition, so the pundits now comment on threats to Google from
new Microsoft and Yahoo search services. Don't bet on it. With
continuing innovation like <scholar.google.com>, I think Google is
still miles ahead.

All best,  --PJK