I think I’m going to try mentioning google scholar in my classes this semester. I’m not going to spend a bunch of time on it, unless requested. I plan to take an informal poll to see if students have heard of it already, mention the importance of using the proxied link from our library’s web site if they are using it from off campus, run a sample search and demonstrate the library lookup features. I think for the average undergrad it would honestly be a great starting point, and it would help them find more scholarly sources then they would otherwise find using regular google. My classes haven’t started yet, so we’ll see how it goes over the next few months.
I’m slightly mystified by technorati tags. Specifically, I’m mystified that I seem to have such prominent placement on the library tag page. I’m guessing that it is because I have a category feed for “library,” but I would think that there should be some actual A-list library bloggers on that page. I wonder if the tags play well with wordpress, or if Technorati isn’t displaying posts by blog authority on their tag pages — not that anything I’m saying about libraries isn’t fabulous, I was just expecting some other people to be listed on the page before I would be. They only seem to be tracking 23 blogs with that tag, which seems very low. That might be the explanation right there.
11:41 pm on February 7th, 2005 1
The lawyers may jerk on Google Scholar’s chain. The American Chemical Society, in an attempt to “protect our trademark, Scifinder Scholar from infringement,” is suing Google to change the name. In fact, ACS is running scared that if Google Scholar is Good Enough for 95% of scholarly searching, Chem. Abstracts Service will strangle on its own inefficiency. I will spare you what I know of the strengths and weaknesses of Chem. Abstracts Service. Suffice to say they’re changing glacially in an era of global warming.
12:10 am on February 8th, 2005 2
Yeah, I’d heard of the whole ACS suing Google thing. I thought it was amusing, yet sad.
9:03 am on February 8th, 2005 3
In a class I did a couple of weeks ago (freshman engineers) only one student (out of 70) had heard of Google Scholar.
GS is not something I’d want to promote too much. It’s more insidious than normal Google, in that it only contains a subsection of the universe of scholarly literature, and it could be easy to get lulled into thinking that you’re getting a complete picture. Plus, Google isn’t terribly choosy as to what they let into Scholar (there’s a good deal of fringe and questionable ’science’ in there). Much better to steer the students towards an appropriate A&I offering.
9:44 am on February 8th, 2005 4
I plan to spend less than 5 minutes on it, and point out that just because it says “scholar”, it doesn’t mean that everything in it is scholarly. One of my main reasons for spending time on it is to get the students to use our proxied link, if they choose to use it. We’ll see how it goes — I might end up changing my mind! The bulk of the class will be spent on regular article databases.
10:49 pm on February 8th, 2005 5
And Google Scholar can still saturate the unwary searcher. A useful example: in regular Google, type in “liquid chromatography.” Without quotes, 1.6 million hits. With quotes, 1.22 million hits. In Google Scholar, no-quotes is 350K hits, while with quotes it’s a paltry 304K. Imprecise search strings will sink one in either index.
11:25 pm on February 8th, 2005 6
This is why they come to my classes, I show them all about avoiding imprecise search strings!!!!