[Web4lib] RE: Another Google question

[Jennifer Heise]

Ok, I'm missing something. Even without relevance ranking, the problem 
described below is going to be a problem with any full-text searching 
tool. Lexis-Nexis is a prime example. I've spent years explaining this 
as one of the advantages and disadvantages of full text vs. 
metadata/subject searching. But people don't naturally do subject 
searching, especially limited-vocabulary subject searching. That's why 
academics (who use known item searching most of the time anyway) have 
been gravitating towards the searching of publisher databases rather 
than subject indexes, and why the Web of Science is so seductive to them.

> For other types of searches, Google doesn't work so well. There's no 
> "conceptual" searching. Topics like "childhood development" or "legal 
> theory" come out very poorly. For names of people, you tend to get 
> pages that have lists of the graduating class of blah blah high 
> school, because they have every possible forename and surname 
> combination. (Note: you and I do well on google searches because not 
> only do we have our own web pages, we have our own domains. I suspect 
> that makes a big difference. My friend Bill Jones doesn't fare so 
> well. Even adding the name of his institution I don't see anything 
> about him until the third page.) Do a search on something like 
> "antique candy dish" and you find yourself with ebay-like pages that 
> list 20-50 items, each with one of the words in your query.


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/   Jennifer Heise, Helpdesk/Librarian, Email: jahb at lehigh.edu
\ \ Lehigh Library & Technology Services, Phone: (610) 758-3072
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