Librarians' Response to Web Scale Search (aka Resource Discovery): Assumptions and Challenges

The term information industry includes publishers, distributors, librarians, search engine optimizers, etc. This industry, as a whole, is in a desperate race to find the best means of finding information.

Discovery Tools (Library catalogs, content publisher's databases, etc.) as a term refers to multifaceted databases that are evolving as a single point interface (to search less and find more using 'all' library resources, in one click). For a background and state-of-the-art reading, click here: Paths of Discovery.


In short, Google, Librarians and Discovery Tools are in the competition. In the following are the challenges faced by librarians' context in relation to planing and implementation of resource discovery--it is all about the evolving nature of effective ways of finding information, easily and user friendly.

Here are a few important contributions by librarians to understand the myths, presumptions, etc.:

• Top 10 Discovery Tool Myths [doc file]

Myth #1: My discovery tool is the biggest and /or the best.
Myth #2: Discovery tools will one day search all of a given library’s collections.
Myth #3: Federated search software is still useful
Myth #4: Discovery tools compete with Google.
Myth #5: The single search box is the goal
Myth #6: Discovery tools don’t require library instruction
Myth #7: Discovery tools are for mostly just for freshmen
Myth # 8: Subject-specific databases are dead
Myth #9: Discovery software vendor X pushes their results to the top
Myth #10: It only takes a few days to implement a discovery tool

• 8 hypotheses why librarians don't like discovery 

Librarians don’t like discovery tools because…
 1.They are too much extra work.
 2.They weren’t our idea in the first place.
 3.Strange things happen to our metadata.
 4.Talking about the strange things happening to the data is hard.
 5.They mess with the concept of the catalog.
 6.They are hard to use in reference interviews.
 7.They make users lazy and dumb. Sometime ago, I asked people about what they thought where the perceptions of librarians of their users.
 8.They cost us our jobs. Continue reading: A growing organism: 8 hypotheses why librarians don’t like discovery 

• More articles on Discovery - Google Sites
• 8 things we know about web scale discovery systems in 2013
• Culture Shock: Librarians' Response to Web Scale Search
• As Researchers Turn to Google, Libraries Navigate the Messy World of Discovery Tools 

Many professors and students gravitate to Google as a gateway to research. Libraries want to offer them a comparably simple and broad experience for searching academic content. As a result, a major change is under way in how libraries organize information. Instead of bewildering users with a bevy of specialized databases—books here, articles there—many libraries are bulldozing their digital silos. They now offer one-stop search boxes that comb entire collections, Google style.
That’s the ideal, anyway. The reality is turning out to be messier. Continue reading: The Chronicle of Higher Education

• Library Resource Discovery Products: Context, Library Perspectives, and Vendor Positions  Marshall Breeding --Single Issue Magazine – January 31, 2014
• Planning and Implementing Resource Discovery Tools in Academic Libraries  Mary Pagliero Popp
• Recent Developments in the Design, Construction, and Evaluation of Digital Libraries: Case Studies (Premier Reference Source)  Colleen Cool

Google Search Secrets, the Book -- Web intelligence demystified?

Q. Is Web intelligence demystified in this book, Google Search Secrets?
Ans. Not really. This book has very less semantic and much of it is presentational, helping you as 'What you see is what you get' (WYSIWYG). In short, this is another Library Guide (not to be confused with LibGuides by Springshare), also telling you 'What You Get Is What You See.'

Google Search Secrets  by Michael P. Sauers and Christa Burns 

Paperback: 224 pages; ALA Neal-Schuman (October 28, 2013); ISBN-13: 978-1555709235

Table of Contents:

Welcome to Google; Google Web Search; Google Images; Google News; Google Videos; Google Maps; Google Blog Search; Google Scholar; Google Patents; Google Books; Google Alerts; Google Search Tips and Tricks

Extract:

Google can be an incredibly powerful tool for research, but the top-of-the-page results are seldom the most beneficial to library users and students, and many of the search engine's most useful features are hidden behind its famously simple interface. Burns and Sauers reveal the secrets of effective Google searches in this invaluable resource showing how to get the most out of the service, with

• An overview of all the tool's search services, including Image, Maps, News, Blogs, Discussions, Scholar, Patents, and Books
• Ready-to-use instructions on how to go beyond the simple search box and top results to get library users the answers they need, fast
• Straightforward guidance on using filters to refine search results, with examples of common searches like images with Creative Commons licenses, news searches set for a date range or into an archive, and videos with closed captioning
• An explanation of the bibliography manager feature of Google Scholar, which allows students and researchers to build bibliographies with ease
• Tips for configuring Safe Search on workstations in children's departments and schools

BDM's social media series: Beginner's guide to Google magazine--over 720 expert tips & tutorials

Note: This is an unofficial, but useful guide to Google and its products. Very beneficial for the beginners, with its 101 approach. At ebay it is described as:

"Beginners guide to google everything you need to know about google's unmissable free apps over 720 expert tips & tutorials. More than just search, discover new ways to google!"
"

Beginners' Guide to Google Magazine Volume 3 Summer 2013
146 pp.

BDM's social media series. — Torquay : Black Dog Media, — Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013. — 1 volume ; 2012- — v. : col. ill., col. ports. ; 28 cm.
ISSN: 2050-1102; ISBN 9780199673025 (pbk.) : 30.BNB Number GBB306993 BNB Number GBB Social media, Periodicals. Public opinion. United States [source: British Library Record]; [FREE ELECTRONIC LIBRARY] [Black Dog New Media: Social Media Strategy, Management ...] -- incidentally this serial/magazine (with its own ISSN) is not listed in Ulrichsweb.com; not even as a book (despite the ISBN) in Worldcat.org

On the same shelf:

• Search and find magazines on Google Book Search. "Users often turn to Google to answer a quick question, but research suggests that up to 10% of users’ daily information needs involve learning about a broad topic. That’s why today we’re introducing new search results to help users find in-depth articles."
• Google Sites @ Elmhurst College A.C. Buehler Library

WEB 2.0 Experience: Wherein breaking up is hard to do

Thinking of making a comparative study of the following titles:


On the same shelf:

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do. By AZADEH ENSHA | New York Times -- includes FACEBOOK, GOOGLE PLUS, AMAZON, LINKEDIN, MYSPACE, TWITTER

 The Anxiety of the Unanswered E-Mail New York Times

Save the Google Reader: Petitions

According to the latest newsletter of WebProNews:

"There are petitions pushing for the saving of Reader. This one at Change.org has over 100,000 supporters. There are others at Change.org and elsewhere. This one at KeepGoogleReader.com has over 31,000 itself."
Continue reading: Will You Miss Google Reader? Clearly, Many Will. March 16, 2013, http://www.webpronews.com/will-you-miss-google-reader-clearly-many-will-2013-03

On the same shelf:

• Pointless Save Google Reader Petition Passes 100,000 Signature
• Fans Start Petitions To Save Google Reader – Consumerist
• Petition to save Google Reader now at 30K strong | 9to5Google
• Feedly promises 'seamless' transition after Google Reader to its own ...

Google’s Convergence Re-visited

Googled to know what's in the news, about: "We're changing our privacy policy.""This stuff matters,"
says a news story: "Google announced this week it intends to consolidate privacy policies and combine all of the user data it has harvested into one profile. This means that data from Gmail users would be combined with that gathered from their searches on YouTube, Maps, Google+, Picassa, Chrome and any of Google's other services..." continue reading @  Asia Times Online



And, thus spake a Blog author @ London Review of Books:

"...Technology companies used to emulate IBM – Microsoft emulated IBM and Google emulated Microsoft – by commoditising the complement: IBM made it cheap and easy to get parts to plug into your computer, allowing it to sell more computers; Microsoft made it cheap and easy to buy computers, allowing it to sell more software; Google made it free and easy to do anything on the internet, allowing it to sell more ads. (Apple made it cheap and easy to get music online, which led to everyone buying iPods, and to 30 per cent of all music sales going through Apple.)" continue reading : 

World Wide Webs

Daniel Soar 31 January 2012

On the same shelf:

• Google’s Convergence by Curtis Schweitzer on 07.08.2009
• Google's One Singularity Sensation - The adMarketplace Blog
• Google Privacy Changes: What you will see - John W. Ellis | John W ...
• The Price We Pay for Google Peter Olsthoorn
• What Every Librarian Should Know about Electronic Privacy Jeannette A. Woodward
• Google Bomb: The Untold Story of the $11.3M Verdict That Changed the Way We Use the Internet Sue Scheff
• The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) Siva Vaidhyanathan
• The Social Media Mind: How social media is changing business, politics and science and helps create a new world order. David Amerland
• The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business Phil Simon
• Google and the Law: Empirical Approaches to Legal Aspects of Knowledge-Economy Business Models (Information Technology and Law Series)
  Aurelio Lopez-Tarruella
• Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom
  Rebecca MacKinnon
• Google and the Mission to Map Meaning and Make Money
  Bart Stephen Milner
• Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business
  Erik Qualman
• No Tech Hacking: A Guide to Social Engineering, Dumpster Diving, and Shoulder Surfing
  Kevin D. Mitnick
• Google: It's in your DNA
  Laney A. Sparacino
• Convergence of Internet search and social networks
  
• Future of SEO: Change, Convergence, Collaboration
• millionshort.com [Million Short is an experimental web search engine (really, more of a discovery engine) that allows you to REMOVE the top million (or top 100k, 10k, 1k, 100) sites from the results set. We thought it might be somewhat interesting to see what we'd find if we just removed an entire slice of the web.]
  ‎
  
• Experts: Trust in Google is 'funny' and 'strange' ITWorld Canada
  ‎
  
• The Google Cookie That Seems to Come Out of Nowhere Wall Street Journal
  ‎
  
• Google Allows 'Do-Not-Track' Browser Button
  
• BEWARE! Google is spying on all you do on the NET
  
• Googlization of Libraries: Debunking the Internet Godzilla Myth
  The Second Follett Lecture, Graduate School of Library and Information Science,
  Dominican University, 15 February 2006, Edward J. Valauskas -- reproduced in World Libraries Volume 19, Numbers 1 & 2, February 2012
  
  
• Google to Consolidate Data March 1: 5 Steps to Protect Your Privacy Huffington Post
  ‎EXTRACT:
  

  1. Don't sign into Google
  2. Use your browser's "private" or "incognito" mode
  3. Clear your Google history
  4. Review your Google dashboard
  5. Clear your browser's history

Google's Bookstore in the Market, at last

If you are following Google's word, it was expected in 2009 and then in June 2010. Anyways, now it is up and running.

What's making news then?
Amazon Vs. Google: Who Will Win E-Book War? "Google's (NasdaqGS: GOOG) launch of e-book store has put the search giant in direct competition with market leader Amazon (NasdaqGS: AMZN), unfolding an interesting rivalry in the coming days."

Excellent comparative review is by Doug Thompson: See the 'Missing Features on Google eBooks app' + 'Strengths of Google eBooks over Amazon Kindle' at Doug Thompson's site

What are the impressions of the Librarians? One example is here, and it is by Tom Peters, and his interesting insights are:

First Impressions on Google's New Bookstore:
"Then I let my digits do some walking and did some comparison shopping for a few books on my wish list. Stanislas Dahaene’s 2009 book, Reading in the Brain, sells for $9.99 both in the Google ebookstore and as a Kindle edition. The Kindle edition of No Shelf Required sells for $46.80 (ouch); the Google ebookstore has a list price of $41.60. You Are Not a Gadget is $9.99 for the Kindle edition, but only $9.48 at the Google ebookstore." continue reading Tom Peters' First Impressions on Google's New Bookstore @ ALA TechSource

On the same shelf:

The list of bookstores offering Google ebooks is here

Google Adsense Appears Anywhere, Anyhow

Thinking about competitive intelligence I have a moment's reflection. The question here is: How do businesses deal with competitors, and how they avoid each other? I found a search engine. In this context, isn't it against benchmarks of best practice in business management that Google Adsense should not be seen where Google is invisible. A competitor of Google, a less popular search engine, shows results from all other sources (READ AGAIN: it is minus Google) and has Google ads, the search engine is called Minus Google

And, about this new born minus-google, a news headlines says: Finnish blogger amputates Google from Google: A road map for regulators of the future, By Cade Metz in San Francisco


And, another question is: Why Does Google Allow Ads for AdSense Ready Websites?

Search for something like "work from home", "Internet jobs" or "make money online" on Google and you’ll see a flood of ads promising easy money through the AdSense program.
If you have ever tried AdSense on a site, you probably know how tough it is to make that first dollar but these ads, which are surprisingly served on the Google network itself, make things look so simple. Just order an "AdSense kit" for a few dollars and the money will start rolling in. continue reading: Digital Inspiration.

See also: The Google-Yahoo! agreement and the future of internet advertising hearing before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Tenth Congress, second session, July 15, 2008.

  Any clue, or at least a response to this reflection?

A Universal / Global Search Engine Remains an Elusive Target

Terminology, with a uniform and consistent meaning of any word, where is it???? 'Universal search' for instance, as a key word means different to different people, so also for the geeks. Ideally speaking, universal / global search, refers to searching deep, searching far, and searching wide--i.e., searching all databases, all formats, and all possible corners. A single company that declares has an audacious plan to organize everything we know is, Google. How complex and how difficult, semantically, it is to organize everything we know, is now a common sense--ORGANIZE in order to identify, store, retrieve, administer, and facilitate the use of local, remote, and networked databases.

Mighty Google (the world's most popular Internet search engine) does not display a uniform, consistent and systematic approach (in all domains that it owns). See an example of search results (number of search results look alike, but see the preferences for text, videos, Sponsored Links / ads, etc.) in google.co. in / google.ca / google.co.uk / google.com--additionally, each site has much more (to add whatever you like): Images Maps News Shopping Gmail more ▼. [Note: To avoid any error in search results, the above sample does not use the alternate button: pages from the ...]

And, this pattern is precisely revealed by Randall Stross, in Planet Google:

"Not only did Google fail to give consistent attention to products after they had been released, it also neglected work on bringing its disparate collections of new types of information--such as books, scholarly journals, maps, videos--together so that a single search could rummage through all of its new information silos, in addition to its database of Web pages.
Users could, of course, go to the various Google sites and do separate searches, but the sites had been developed separately, in haste, before Google could figure out how to make all of them accessible in a single search..."
"Between 2001 and 2006, several Google engineers briefly took on universal search as a project. But they lost interest before making progress." (p. 182). "In May 2007, Google was ready to announce a limited version of Universal Search.
The search results that users now saw were changed only subtly--only a few non-Web items were added to the first page of search results...." (p. 183).

Some other quotes on Universal / Global approaches:

"Universal Search is still one of those buzz words that keeps coming up within the world of search. By now, many of you probably know that Universal Search refers to search results that blend videos, images, news, local listings and more. Each of the major search engines are taking a stab at their own interpretation of Universal Search. From an online marketing perspective, Universal Search presents many new opportunities to explore and learn what works best in each platform for a site..." continue reading: Ask universal search • Google universal search • MSN universal search • universal search • Yahoo universal search

"Just so I'm clear, I don't care if Google automatically skews the results on google.co.uk even if I do NOT change to see "pages from the UK."
I'm in the UK. I know most people will automatically be redirected to co.uk, and many won't change to .com. I also know many will benefit from having the results be skewed, since they won't do it themselves.
But if I tune into Google.com, that's where I find it strange to have the skewing happen anyway. As far as I'm concerned, Google.com is the international channel that many people all tune into from various locations. Having it broadcast different results is inconsistent, I feel. But that's my take, of course" @ What Do You Hate About Google? - Search Engine Watch Forums

See also:

Google Universal Search vs Yahoo and Microsoft Live - Part 1 » SEO ...

Whaddya Call It? All-a-do-about terminology management   

Google in Jeopardy: What If IBM’s Watson Dethroned the King of Search?  By Vasant Dhar, 10.05.13 Wired Opinion

Federated Search - Reading now

The term federated search is also known as, meta-search, cross-search, combined-search, and aggregated-search. First, it is about simultaneously searching, with one-click, in several electronic sources. Second, it is about getting all the search results displayed in a single browser. And the book I am reading is Federated Search by Christopher N. Cox

I recommend the book for a basic understanding on the emerging theme of federated search strategies, especially about American academic libraries’ experiences in this sphere.