[WEB4LIB] Chronicle article: Google Unveils a Search Engine Focused on Scholarly Materials

[K.G. Schneider]

The researcher they interviewed said, "With a good ranking algorithm, the
need for limiting is less significant than it used to be. ...It is if the
ranking is not good that I have to increasingly refine my search until I get
exactly what I want."

I'm mulling over that, search-wise, and I don't disagree with it in general
(and Google is aiming for "in general"), but there are some specialized
searches that come to mind that this doesn't address. For just one example,
a scholar may be looking for major news articles for a particular date in
history, to give background and context to a historical piece. You can do
that in the NY Times database (although I wish it could be filtered better).


This made me wonder in a big-picture way if we should let other people fuss
with aggregating data and put our emphasis on pushing specialized search
interfaces. 

I thought it was interesting that the Chronicle reporter used the term
"navel gazing" rather than "ego surfing." 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com