GoogleandGoogleScholar-BodleianLibraries.ppt

Google and Google Scholar Roger Mills and Judy Reading May 2007 Welcome to the Web The world’s biggest haystack What can you do in a haystack? Romp Get hay fever Have unexpected encounters Sleep Not do research So what do you fancy? Finding needles Google helps you find needles in haystacks But: Google is an index of web pages A journal article is not a web page So Google is not good at finding journal articles However: An image of a journal article may be placed on a web page So Google may find it If it’s free and not behind a firewall How do you know? Google is fast Very fast Proudly fast Tells you how fast Found OUCS home page in 0.09 secs Also found 350,000 other ‘relevant’ pages But put home page first Brilliant - How does it do it? Not telling…. Did I need 350,000 references? Nobody looks at all the references Google retrieves So why display them? Algorithm takes into account links made by other pages And click-throughs So the top result for a given search is determined over time by the people who make that search Is that the same as the ‘best’ result? OK, how would you do it? To index a document, I’d read it first. Google can’t read We don’t read the web – we view it We remember references visually – that red book on the third shelf down… If Google can list all the red books on all the third shelves down in all the world I’m bound to find it, right? Actually I remember I saw in Oxford, so I just need to list all the red books in Oxford – doddle That’s not really how Google works – is it? So you read the article, and then…? Give it some index terms Not ones I’ve just made up, but ones from a standard list. That way, everyone will know what the article’s about, and every article on the same topic can be found. Provided everyone agrees what the article’s about. Then I’d list the authors in a standard form: so everything by Roger Mills, Roger Anthony Mills, Roger A Mills, R Anthony Mills, Anthony Mills, R A Mills can be found in one go. That’s a controll