Going beyond Google: there's a treasure trove of valuable research online—if you know how to find it

University Business, August, 2005 by Tom Warger

Librarians complain that students now think the web is all they need to research any topic. Students do not make a distinction between internet, web, and online sources--these are in fact the domain of much of their information. Since the appearance of the first Library online public access catalogs (OPACs), the tilt from paper to electronic sources of information has been rapid and dramatic. Over the past dozen years the change has been all-encompassing: Most paper-based resources have an online edition; some products and services are new technologies in themselves.

A student's research typically begins shallow. When the topic is new, the first task is to find related basic information. But then the question becomes how much is enough.

A big part of education is to learn how far the search needs to go. Finding stuff is rarely the problem; to know how many gathered facts are sufficient has always been a threshold of learning, even the divide between information and wisdom. Online search tools are built on the premise that more results are better than fewer, and some result is better than none. As a consequence, the volume of returns to search queries leads quickly to a need to filter and reduce the scope of information.

The assessment of particulars is not a special problem of the electronic age. The hallmark of research has always been the appropriate distinction between ordinary and distinctive information. Students at all levels of education know the importance of choices they must make as their research accumulates. The key question regarding technology is how it can aid the efforts of scholars to find and evaluate information.

ENGINES, GUIDES, AND MORE

Public, general-purpose search engines, such as Google, Altavista, and Ask Jeeves, are the usual starting points for new searches. People tend to prefer one over the others but are often unable to explain their choice in specific terms. Each search engine uses an obscure mix of advanced algorithms to index, search, match, and rank results. Even careful observers of the technology are unable to tell, in most cases, what techniques each engine uses, let alone which among them account for the set of search returns.

Conversations with students suggest that few know their preferred search engine's syntax for string matching or Boolean operations to control their searches, even though online help does put those capabilities at their fingertips. The craft of searching seems to be haphazard, partly because of the secrecy surrounding search technologies (the quest for competitive advantage) and the casual approach used by most searchers. The speed and ease of trying an alternate search seems to outweigh the benefits of a better-formed search, much as the computer "backspace" key undercut the value of accurate typing.

The observation that search engines produce differing returns for the same search criteria and control syntax Led to the development of metasearch engines, which submit queries to multiple engines and aggregate the results. The concept is simple: More searches produce more results.

Dogpile, Metacrawler, and Profusion are examples of metasearches that vary in sophistication from compound submissions to inclusion of specialized ("vertical") search engines, personalized site preferences, and subscription services.

Another advance beyond the simple search is the web search directory, which groups indexes, lists, and descriptive articles by topic. Widely used general directories include Yahoo!, Librarians' Index to the Internet, and About.com. These services provide information that has been filtered or even vetted by someone, although the identity and credentials of those who do that work are rarely made available.

Not all web directories have that anonymity. In higher education, the Internet Scout Project is structured Like a newsletter, complete with the reviewer's initials at the end of each entry. The materials collected in directories are findable on the web, for the most part; they have the advantage of having been winnowed already from the chaff of extraneous data.

For scholars, the problems of the web are too much information Lying on the surface--where the lack of storage structure makes discovery cumbersome--and too much information hidden behind locked portals. The concealed, or "deep," web is the properly. termed internet beyond the web. The web is that part of the internet that is accessible via HTTP protocol; not everything that can be reached on the network is "ultimately web-accessible.

Google's "Scholar" service is founded on access to off-web sources that have allowed Google to search and index. Hits obtained via Google Scholar typically link to at Least an abstract of the target text and sometimes to Of the full text. Conditions for access to the texts remains in the control of the copyright owners and might be restricted or available only to subscription holders. Scholar also includes links to articles citing the article that was the subject of the search query.