Google Scholar

Google Scholar
What It Is, and Where It's Going

I. Google Premise

From it's inception as an academic project at Stanford University, Google has always been about developing a means to search the World Wide Web with simplest search phrases. “We disagree vehemently with this position. If a user issues a query like “Bill Clinton” they should get reasonable results since there is an enormous amount of high quality information available on this topic.” (Brin & Page).

Google Overview

II. Google History

1995: Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page meet at Stanford
December 1997: They release Google precursor, BackRub
December 1998: Google in Beta, 10,000 searches a day
November 1999: Fortune Magazine runs an article praising Google, first notice in mainstream "nontechnical" press.
2001: One million searches a day.
December 2004: Google unveils a beta version of Google Scholar, announces plans to digitize public domain books from major US universities, and Oxford in England.
Winter 2005: Google unveils a beta version of Google Desktop, a way to "Google" local files, and Google "Autolink" which can automatically add links to web pages while they are viewed.
Source: http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline.html

III. Google Scholar

What it Does: In a nutshell, Google has built an algorithm that makes a calculated guess at *what it thinks* is scholarly content mined from the OPEN WEB, and then makes it accessible via the Google Scholar interface..Google is brilliant (that is, ingenious at marketing and trying new things)…” Kennedy and Price.
It looks like Google’s bots are capable of reading bibliographical information in many different formats and generating database entries for resources that are cited in web-accessible documents, but that are not accessible on the web directly. This may help make up for the fact that regular Google is naturally skewed towards serving up information that is readily available online. For some search topics, the highest-ranked hits are older academic books that are not available online. Jerz.
What it Doesn't Do: Search proprietary databases, provide articles or books if they are not available on the OPEN WEB.
And Google Won’t Say: What constitutes “scholarly” in Google’s view, how big Google Scholar actually is, how many publications Google is indexing, how often Scholar is “refreshed.”
Summary Thoughs: A lot of citations to scholarly material have found their way to the open web, but Google Scholar won't put anybody out of business just yet. May be of tremendous use to researchers who aren't affiliated with universities.

IV. Google Print

Who's In: Digitizing library collections at Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Michigan, Oxford University (U.K.), and the New York Public Library.
What's In: Google will work "conservatively" within copyright laws.
Who's Doing the Work: Google is doing all the scanning. Google is saying very little about how they are going to scan the books, but it is assumed they will do OCR indexing so texts will be searchable.
Summary Thoughts: Being able to "Google" the Public Domain is a good thing.

V. For News About Google

VI. Bibliography of Things Google

Abram, Stephen. "Google Scholar: Thin Edge of the Wedge?" Information Outlook 9.1 (2005): 44-6.

Albanese, Andrew. "Google to Digitize 15 Million Books." Library Journal 130.1 (2005): 18-22.

Calishain, Tara, Rael Dornfest, and D. J. Adams. Google Pocket Guide. 1st ed. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2003.

Calishain, Tara, and Rael Dornfest. Google Hacks : [100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools]. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2003.

Edwards, Elizabeth. "The Google Deal (Down on the Farm)." Jan 7 2005.
<http://edwards.orcas.net/>

Felter, Laura M. "Google Scholar, Scirus, and the Scholarly Search Revolution." Searcher 13.2 (2005): 43-8.

Fister, Barbara. "Google's Digitization Project--what Difference Will it make?" Library Issues 25.4 (2005): 1,2-4.

Gorman, Dave. Dave Gorman's Googlewhack! Adventure. 1st ed. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2004.

Hill, Brad. Building Your Business with Google for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Pub, 2004.

---. Google for Dummies. Indianapolis, Ind: Wiley Pub, 2003.

Kennedy, Shirl, and Gary Price. "Big News: 'Google Scholar' is Born." Nov 18 2004. <http://www.resourceshelf.com/>.

Kirkpatrick, David. "What's a Google? A Great Search Engine, that's what." Fortune 140.9 (1999): 298.

Kraynak, Joe. Google : Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley, 2005.

Leslie, Mitch. "A Google for Academia." Science 306.5702 (2004): 1661-.

Milstein, Sarah, and Rael Dornfest. Google : The Missing Manual. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2004.

O'Hara, Shelley. Easy Google. Indianapolis, Ind: Que Pub, 2004.

Pike, George H. "All Google, all the Time." Information Today 22.2 (2005): 15-6.

Poremsky, Diane. Google and Other Search Engines. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2004.

Schneider, Fritz, Nancy Blachman, and Eric Fredricksen. How to do Everything with Google. Emeryville, Calif: McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2004.

Sherman, Chris. "Google Desktop Moves Out of Beta." 2005. <http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/>.

Tennant, Roy. "Google Out of Print." Library Journal 130.3 (2005): 27.

Tenopir, Carol. "Google in the Academic Library." Library Journal 130.2 (2005): 32-.

Young, Jeffrey R. "Google Unveils a Search Engine Focused on Scholarly Materials." Chronicle of Higher Education 51.15 (2004): A34-.

VII Google Danger

Google Bombs Hiler, John. "Google Time Bomb." Microcontent News. March 3, 2002.
<http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/googlebombs.htm>
Johnson, Steven. "The Art of Googlebombing." Discover 25.7 (2004): 22-3.

VIII Google Fun

Google Whacking! Rules: Enter phrases of at least two words. First person who can find a phrase that returns only one web site wins!

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