18.371 Google Scholar

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 371.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: Baden Hughes <badenh_at_cs.mu.OZ.AU> (90)
         Subject: Re: 18.369 Google Scholar, scholars and googles

   [2] From: lachance_at_origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois (45)
                 Lachance)
         Subject: Re: 18.369 Google Scholar, scholars and googles

   [3] From: Ken Friedman <ken.friedman_at_bi.no> (29)
         Subject: Google scholarship

   [4] From: Alexandre Enkerli <aenkerli_at_indiana.edu> (33)
         Subject: Google Scholar and Easy Access

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 09:36:57 +0000
         From: Baden Hughes <badenh_at_cs.mu.OZ.AU>
         Subject: Re: 18.369 Google Scholar, scholars and googles

What strikes me about "Google Scholar" is that in fact ordinary Google does
pretty well at finding scholarly materials, especially in digital archives
(which of course also have well rounded search facilities and many in fact
publish their catalogues to web search engines, or employ Google's
technology directly).

Since I don't inherently trust Google's domain knowledge, I can't actually
see what they provide as far as utility is concerned by this new service
that couldn't be done (or wasn't being done) before - apart from claiming a
new piece of the pie.

IMHO The process of scholarly evaluation and critique is exactly the same
whether using Google, Google Scholar, or a domain-centric search facility.

Baden

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004, Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard
McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>) wrote:

> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 369.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
> www.princeton.edu/humanist/
> Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
>
> [1] From: Norman Hinton <hinton_at_springnet1.com> (11)
> >
> [2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk> (33)
> Subject: scholars and googles
>
>
>--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 09:11:48 +0000
> From: Norman Hinton <hinton_at_springnet1.com>
> Subject: Re: 18.366 Google Scholar; Innovate-Live Portal
>
>Here's part of a note Janice Bogstad wrote on Mediev-L, the Medieval
>History List, about "Google Scholar" --
>
>"Just so people don't get the wrong idea,
>I suggest that they try some of their favorite
>searches on this service. It's not very accurate
>and not at all comprehensive. Clunky search
>engine too.
>
>Please don't advertise it to colleagues or students
>as a legitimate research tool. We've only done
>spot-checks at our library and found many
>cases of under- or mis-reporting."
>
>
>--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 09:31:18 +0000
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
> Subject: scholars and googles
>
>Some time ago, Terry Winograd had the following to say about Google:
>
>"What surprised me, which Google was part of, is that superficial search
>techniques over large bodies of stuff could get you what you wanted. I grew
>up in the AI tradition, where you have a complete conceptual model, and the
>information retrieval tradition, where you have complex vectors of key
>terms and Boolean queries. The idea that you can index billions of pages
>and look for a word and get what you want is quite a trick. To put it in
>more abstract terms, it's the power of using simple techniques over very
>large numbers versus doing carefully constructed systematic analysis."
>("Convergence, ambient technology, and success in innovation: Talking with
>Terry Winograd", Ubiquity 3.23, 23-9 July 2002.
><http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/t_winograd_1.html>http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/t_winograd_1.html)
>
>To my mind, the emergence of Google Scholar raises the question of why we
>need such things, or at least why scholars need to pay these developments
>so much attention. Where the attention should really be, I think, is on
>teaching students and colleagues how to find things online with Google, A9
>etc., and how to go about discovering what sort of knowledge any given Web
>page has to offer. In my experience students (who have, unless they are
>older ones, grown up surfing the Web) often cannot find what is easily
>discovered and haven't much of a clue how to figure out what each page has
>to say to them. Is part of the problem that we are still thinking in terms
>of the authoritative source rather than in terms of sampling and sifting?
>
>Winograd refers to getting "what you want". I'm remembering the old piece
>of wisdom about being careful about what you want, since you may just get
>it. I'm thinking that our wanting may need an imaginative overhaul.
>
>Comments?
>
>Yours,
>WM
>
>[NB: If you do not receive a reply within 24 hours please resend]
>Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
>Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
>7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk
>www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 09:37:52 +0000
         From: lachance_at_origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
         Subject: Re: 18.369 Google Scholar, scholars and googles

Willard,

This little bit deserves elaboration...

> page has to offer. In my experience students (who have, unless they are
> older ones, grown up surfing the Web) often cannot find what is easily
> discovered and haven't much of a clue how to figure out what each page has
> to say to them. Is part of the problem that we are still thinking in terms
> of the authoritative source rather than in terms of sampling and sifting?

Is your observation related only to the WWW and non-WWW experience of the
students in questions? Are older students just more likely to have some
training in research methodology?

In two analogous areas, skill in locating information is a function of an
ability to scan and to compare. In the worlds of business, government and
non-profit organizations, a person will come across a variety of genres
and a mass of heterogenous matter. It is common practice in those
domains to ask for help in locating information and _reading_ documents
or _listening_.

One example:
Imagine assisting a person with limited eyesight whose prescription
eyewear is not at hand. They check a piece of documentation for the
street address for an appointment. The assistant is able to locate the
information in the smaller font of the address block in the stationary.
That information was visually subordinate to some other important
information in the document (how to prepare for the the appointment and
what to expect from a diagnostic procedure).

The point of the example is not to suggest that the document needs to be
redesigned (that may very well be the case). It is to suggest that the
pedagogical goal of creating better researchers (able to find the correct
information quickly) may depend upon inculcating an ability to multitask.
Multitask in the dual sense of asking onself questions (i.e. replicating a
dialogue between questor and assistant) and handling, manipulating,
observing an object or a set of objects.

In electronic display of information, play with scrolling, window/buffer
toggling, resizing or modifying display, cropping, masking are all
activities that can enhance search skill. For example, searching a
document using both full word and truncated word, is analogous to other
types of reframing of the point of observation.

Finally a last question: are the older students also more experienced in
packaging information (writing, illustrating, displaying, recording
voice mail)?

--
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
A calendar is like a map. And just as maps have insets, calendars in the
21st century might have 'moments' expressed in flat local time fanning out
into "great circles" expressed in earth revolution time.
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 09:38:31 +0000
         From: Ken Friedman <ken.friedman_at_bi.no>
         Subject: Google scholarship
It seems to me that we must use several approaches. Google affords
us a rich overview.
It has been my experience that using Google as a research tool requires
care and time. I've never done a serious Google search that yields
truly rich results without about 2 hours of searching to allow for
probes, comparison, and inquiry.
Scholarship requires critical thinking based on analysis, logic, and
rhetoric. Authoritative sources remain necessary for scholarship --
along with the sampling and sifting that help us to generate ideas
and form research strategies.
-- Ken Friedman
Willard McCarthy wrote:
"To my mind, the emergence of Google Scholar raises the question of why we
need such things, or at least why scholars need to pay these developments
so much attention. Where the attention should really be, I think, is on
teaching students and colleagues how to find things online with Google, A9
etc., and how to go about discovering what sort of knowledge any given Web
page has to offer. In my experience students (who have, unless they are
older ones, grown up surfing the Web) often cannot find what is easily
discovered and haven't much of a clue how to figure out what each page has
to say to them. Is part of the problem that we are still thinking in terms
of the authoritative source rather than in terms of sampling and sifting?"
--
Ken Friedman
Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management
Design Research Center
Denmark's Design School
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 09:39:22 +0000
         From: Alexandre Enkerli <aenkerli_at_indiana.edu>
         Subject: Google Scholar and Easy Access
We probably all agree that scholar.google.com isn't an end-all solution to
literature searches. It's obviously very spotty and it still requires
people to understand the process of searching for information. We can (and
certainly will) talk about this at length. But Google Scholar is still a
neat trick.
Part of it reminds one of the Citation Indexes (now on ISI's "Web of
Knowledge"). When results of a search are a citation, you can in fact find
some pieces that cite that source. This type of forward searching is
extremely valuable for those of us who already know what we want. But
what's neater is the potential for easy access. We all have our favorite
online databases for scholarly sources and Google won't replace that but it
does provide easier access to some sources. Of course, one still needs to
be in the IP range of an institution that is subscribed to the journals
found by Google (good use of VPN!). But one doesn't need costly databases
to at least find information *about* the sources. The principle itself is
neat and there are some possible next steps. One possibility would be if
academic publishers were to see the light and finally provide open access
to the material they control. Then Google Scholar would let information
achieve its "desire to be free." Then Google Scholar could provide metadata
about sources in a format compatible with citation solutions (RefDB,
BibTeX, MARC, EndNote...). This could fulfill some of Tim Berners-Lee's
dreams and prophecies. Of course, it'd be nice to have searches put sources
in perspective, showing the networks of who cites whom and such.
Perhaps more likely to happen, though, is a further commercialization of
literature searches and the appropriation of content by those who
distribute it as opposed to those who create it (publishers and databases
as opposed to authors). We'll see...
Alex Enkerli, Teaching Fellow, Visiting Lecturer
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Indiana University South Bend, DW
2269
1700 Mishawaka Ave., South Bend, IN 46634-7111
Office: (574)520-4102
Fax: (574)520-5031 (to: Enkerli, Anthropology)