Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Forward from the Kansas Library Network Board director:

Nov 18, 12:35 AM (ET)


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) - Online search engine leader Google Inc.
(GOOG)
is setting out make better sense of all the scholarly work stored on the
Web.

The company's new service, unveiled late Wednesday at , draws upon newly
developed algorithms to list the academic research that appears to be
most
relevant to a search request. Mountain View-based Google doesn't plan to
charge for the service nor use the feature to deliver text-based ads -
the
primary source of its profits.http://scholar.google.com

"Google has benefited a lot from scholarly research, so this is one way
we
are giving back to the scholarly community," said Anurag Acharya, a
Google
engineer who helped develop the new search tools.

Although Google already had been indexing the reams of academic research
online, the company hadn't been able to separate the scholarly content
from
commercial Web sites.

By focusing on the citations contained in academic papers, Google also
engineered its new system to provide a list of potentially helpful
material
available at libraries and other offline sources.

The scholarly search effort continues Google's effort to probe even
deeper
into content available online and offline. Last month, Google expanded a
program that invites publishers to scan their books into the search
engine's
index, enabling people to peek at the contents online before deciding
whether to buy a copy.
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Eric Hansen, Executive Director
Kansas Library Network Board
300 SW 10th Ave., Rm. 343N
Topeka, KS 66612-1593
(785) 296-3875; (800) 432-3919
eric@kslib.info
www.skyways.org/KSL/KLNB