Google Scholar, the beta Google service for searching scholarly information, crawls scholarly, web-based content--predominantly by targeting specific publishers with which Google has contractual arrangements. Open access material is crawled as well. These full-text materials, abstracts, and citations are being indexed, and citations from these…

In this article, the authors share their experiences as librarians, and offer their perspectives on issues critical to the new academic librarian. When the authors sat down to sort through ideas for this article, it became apparent that while their backgrounds, coursework, and experiences differed considerably, their passions and concerns are more…

Over the past dozen years, the switch from paper to electronic sources of information has been all encompassing. How can technology support the efforts of scholars to find and evaluate information? General-purpose search engines use an obscure mix of advanced algorithms to index, search, match, and rank results. Metasearch software extends the…

It seems a foregone conclusion that repositories for reusable learning objects (RLOs), based on common standards and supported by suitable search facilities, will foster a global economic market in the production of RLOs. Actual reuse will support producers of high-quality RLOs, and other producers will be unable to compete, i.e. competition…

In December 2006, the Missouri River Regional Library (MRRL) in Jefferson City, embarked on a journey. They had been watching the Public Library of Charlotte-Mecklenburg County (PLCMC), NC, on its adventure through the wilds of Web 2.0, and they decided to follow the trail it had blazed. What PLCMC had done was pretty revolutionary. The library…

The migration of online educational needs to tools like Google applications, coupled with the realization that today's twenty-first-century students are digital natives who have lived their entire lives exposed to current technology, forces educators to find ways to use technology to enhance traditional curriculum. In this article, the author…

This handbook provides information on how Internet search engines and related software and utilities work and how to use them in order to improve search techniques. The book begins with an introduction to the Internet. Part 1 contains the following chapters that cover mining the Internet for information: "An Introduction to Search…

Explains intelligent agents, special software tools that help make the Web more interactive by helping with information retrieval. Describes major types of agents, including search agents and agents for specialized tasks including monitors and knowledge management; and lists relevant Web sites. (LRW)

Discusses subject gateway sites and commercial search engines for the Web and presents an explanation of Google's PageRank algorithm. The principle question addressed is the conditions under which a gateway site will increase the likelihood that a target page is found in search engines. (LRW)

Compares links between 76 Chinese university Web sites with ranks obtained from the NetBig lists, using a specialized Web crawler to collect data. Provides a background to the higher education system in mainland China, describes the NetBig ranking scheme, and explains Web site crawling problems encountered. (Author/LRW)

Metasearching of online current news services is a potentially useful Web application of distributed information retrieval techniques. Reports experiences in building a metasearcher designed to provide up-to-date searching over a significant number of rapidly changing current news sites, focusing on how to merge results from the search engines at…

Discussion of information literacy and education focuses on a module developed to provide instruction related to Web searching. Highlights include basic Web search strategies; Web search tools, including directories, search engines, specialized search tools, and the use of pathfinder pages; and suggested practice activities. (Author/LRW)

Discusses how to improve the quality of Internet search systems and introduces the Ghosts Consensus Method which is free from the drawbacks of digital democracy algorithms and is based on linear programming tasks. Highlights include vector space models; determining relevant documents; and enriching query terms. (LRW)

Discusses the emergence of general audience digital libraries (GADLs), a context that represents a hybrid of both traditional information retrieval, using primarily bibliographic resources provided by database vendors, and popular information retrieval such as public search systems on the Web. Reports findings of a study investigating end-user…

Discussion of Web search strategies focuses on a comparative study of textual and graphical summarization mechanisms applied to search engine results. Suggests that thumbnail images (graphical summaries) can increase efficiency in processing results, and that enhanced thumbnails (augmented with readable textual elements) had more consistent…