New research tool: Google Scholar

[DeepModem Mom]

New York Times
A Tool for Scholars Who Like to Dig Deep
By DANIEL TERDIMAN
Published: November 25, 2004

....a new service called Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), (is) a one-stop shop of scholarly abstracts, books, peer-reviewed papers and technical papers intended for academics and scientists....

***

"For scholars and researchers of every stripe, it will be enormously helpful to be able to sit at their kitchen tables with a regular Internet connection and get access to papers we formerly found only by trudging to a university library," said Emily Shurr, a Duke University instructor in leadership training....

***

(Anurag Acharya, the engineer who designed Google Scholar) would not disclose the size of Google Scholar's index or the number of its sources, saying only: "We worked with lots of publishers. Most major scholarly publishers are included."

But Barbara Quint, editor in chief of Searcher Magazine, a publication for database professionals, says that Google Scholar is already indexing millions of records. Indeed, terms like "history" or "science" return more than two million records.

Google says that if publishers, scholars and scholarly societies want their information indexed, they need only let Google know....

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/25/technology/25goog.html

[WMliberal]

1. i wonder how it will compare to JSTOR

and more importantly, if it will be a free service.

[drhilarius]

3. I absolutely love Jstor...

I would be sunk without it. Just tried the beta for Google scholar, pretty fast and comprehensive.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. The article begins with reference to a professor who uses Jstor...

to research Dickens, with useful results. "But the same is not true when he looks for scholarly works from South Africa. That's because, he says, Jstor does not subscribe to that country's journals."

I think the service will be free, as the article indicates that as it gets going, there will probably be ads.

[cavanaghjam]

2. I got a hunch

it'll be used by more than scholars. Look for more quotes from Tacitus, Herodotus, et al. in the blogosphere.