SiteLines - Ideas About Web Searching

Database of International Rehabilitation Research

Spotted on Gary Price's Resource Shelf:

Produced by the Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange (CIRRIE), at SUNY Buffalo, the
Database of International Rehabilitation Research contains "over 21,000 citations of international rehabilitation research published between 1990 and the present." You can search by subject heading (and there is a thesaurus available), author, title keywords, research area, geographic area, and language. A handy quick search link makes major topical areas browsable - a great feature for those searchers who can't figure out the search functions.

This is a handy database alternative for those who can't access licensed databases for rehabilitation resources.

Dogged by Overture, Google tests local search

The big Google news of the last few days is Google's test of a local search function. In development by Google Labs, this feature would allow a user to type in a search term, along with an address or ZIP code (US only for now), and find web results along with a mini-map of the area.

More interesting than the function is the timing of the announcement, which comes just weeks after Yahoo!-owned Overture, Google's principal search-ad competitor, started testing a similar local-search feature on AltaVista, an Overture search brand. (When I checked today, the demo had been taken offline.) For both Overture and Google, the processes of selecting what constitutes "local" are algorithmic, with crawlers programmed to identify page conditions that would seem to qualify as local information.

Why is local search so hot? Google company spokespersons were quoted by CNET News that local search is part of "Google's goal ... to connect users to the information they need, whether it's half way around the world or just around the corner." Yeah, sure, whatever. Local search is driven by the quest for ad revenue. The advertising stakes for local search are huge (think of all the pizza parlors lining up to buy Google Adwords) and at the present time, growth in the local search ads marketplace is largely unexploited.

Web Research Guide from Elsevier

Elsevier has produced a highly readable Web Research Guide, aimed "at scientists, faculty members students, researchers and authors who have access to ScienceDirect. Although clearly intended to promote ScienceDirect, the general suggestions about search tools, written by an unidentified editorial board, are really very good -- and attractively presented as lists of tips with examples and templates.

Does Information Visualization Matter?

At an industry event earlier this week, I was asked what I thought about information visualization techniques and developments that can enhance the search process.

Tools that help users visualize search results have made news lately. Anacubis is running a demo of visualization using a joint Amazon/Google database; Kartoo boasts a metasearch engine that visualizes results in map-style form.

I've always been skeptical of the value of visualization of print information, for two main reasons.

First, information wants to be read not turned into a map, and I'm not sure that transforming it into a map actually helps people make better choices from lists of links than they would by simply reading and picking from the list. I much prefer clustering technology, which enables grouping of similar resources while retaining a printed, linear environment.

Second, visualization does nothing to improve information quality. Meta-search engine hopeful Kartoo (a French venture) searches against a dozen tools -- search engines Altavista, AlltheWeb, Teoma, Lycos, Wisenut, HotBot and MSN; French portals such as Voila and Le Toile du Quebec; and a handful of others. All the existing problems of meta-search are still present in Kartoo . For example, sponsored links rise to the top, and the nature of the ranking extractions mean that many excellent sites will be missed.

Visualization of bad information doesn't make the information better: it's still bad information. We must consider the sources used in any meta-search tool before accepting it as a valid solution to an information seeking problem.

Google is testing "Related Searches"

Aaron Schwartz reported last week that Google is testing a "related search" presentation near the top of search results.

You may be familiar with this feature in other search engines, but it would be new on Google. I'll watch for additional information on this topic but in the meantime you can see a screenshot from the haymeadows.com site, although I'm not sure precisely what search it is displaying.

Researching Bankruptcy Information on the Web

This excellent guide (called a "research notebook") is prepared by the staff of Harvard Business School's Baker Library. It's one of a number of research notebooks on various business-related topics (Labor Statistics, Hedge Funds, Benchmarking, Intellectual Property) prepared under the auspices of the Harvard Business School. The complete list is available at http://hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/topics/notebook/

Interesting Research Sites from INFOMINE's latest updates

Some interesting and substantial web resources gleaned from the last few issues of InfoMine's Alert Service:

IDEAS is a central index of over 200,000 bibliographic citations (100,000 in full text, downloadable!) in economics research.

Business Ethics in the Movies is a small database of approximately 80 movies that portray some aspect of business ethics.

Human Rights Internet: a clearinghouse of human rights information worldwide. Includes news, reports, articles, directories of human rights organizations and more.

Older Medine Citations to Be Added to PubMed

The National Library of Medicine reported that over 1.5 million old Medline citations dating from 1953 to 1965 will be added to the PubMed database. Because the data lacks certain coding conventions, there are some quirks involved in retrieving OLDMEDLINE records in PubMed. Serious PubMed searchers should consult the NLM Technical Bulletin related to the announcement.

Bioethics Web

Another excellent affiliate site from the UK-based Resource Discovery Network, BioethicsWeb is a "gateway to evaluated, quality Internet resources relating to biomedical ethics, including ethical, social, legal and public policy questions arising from advances in medicine and biology, issues relating to the conduct of biomedical research and approaches to bioethics." The site was launched about a year ago and now has links to just under 300 resources -- all carefully evaluated and fully annotated. The site is browsable through a guided hierarchy. Entries are also searchable through a typical search template.

My only gripe is a typical one with library-developed gateways -- the presentation of browse/search in an alphabetical list arranged by title.

Ethics Resources on the Web

Sharon Stoerger of the University of Illinois maintains an excellent series of link lists on a variety of ethics topics at http://www.web-miner.com/ethicsindex.htm.

As the new school year kicks in, SiteLines readers will be particularly interested in her resources on plagiarism. The list includes links to copyright issues, sites for instructors and students, case studies (great for teaching!) buy-a-term-paper sites, and a nifty set of plagiarism detection tools -- which includes Google!

RSS Primer

RSS enables easy syndication of published web content for easy retrieval and redeployment by others. RSS is used extensively by news reporting sources and weblogs ('blogs') to enable easy linking to headlines, and RSS also permits those who use newsreading software to easily track headlines from RSS sources.

There are some great applications for RSS in libraries and at technical help desks (newsletters, reference desk "where-to-look" files) but for the novice, it's sometimes difficult to conceptualize what RSS is when you don't know anything about it.

A helpful primer on RSS is now available through the EEVL, the Internet guide for engineering, mathematics and computing. The guide "is primarily intended for a non-technical audience who require an overview of RSS in order to allow them to make decisions regarding the possible use of the technology. However, the guidelines do provide recommendations for good practice, case studies on RSS production and links to tools and specifications which will provide useful starting points for those tasked with actually producing RSS feeds."

Quick Trick: Temporarily Remove Browser Toolbars

This is a great trick for those of us who teach web searching or prepare printed materials with screenshots of web pages. You can instantly remove all the toolbars from your browser window by pressing the F11 key on your Windows keyboard. The effect is only temporary: pressing F11 again restores your previous toolbar settings. The trick works in both Internet Explorer and Netscape on a Windows platform.