[nfais-l] Introducing the Google Research Pane

[jilloneill at nfais.org]

NFAIS members who have used Google Docs (now called Google   Drive) in the past 24 hours  may have already encountered the latest integration of search into that service, entitled Google Research. When working within a specific document, highlighting a particular author name or phrase and then triggering the research option under the Tools menu causes a new pane to open up in the user’s window.
 
In turn, that window contains a search box with the highlighted name or phrase where a search runs against both Google Scholar and Google Web Search. Once the results have loaded, the user can click on a result, thereby bringing up the option of inserting either a footnote or a citation in Google Scholar. If they click on a Web search result, there is the option of previewing the web page, inserting a link in the document, or a citation. If an image loads, it’s possible to drag the image from the results box into the user’s working document and automatically include the URL to the original source of the image.
 
What it can’t necessarily do is find a quote in full text. A few sample searches made it evident that the service isn’t tied into Google Books. When I tried to get the system to search for the acronym, NFSAIS, referenced in the text of Burton W. Adkinson’s Two Centuries of Federal Information, it couldn’t do so and kept offering me instead the acronym of NFAAS (a government service to naval families). Adkinson’s work wasn’t one that had been scanned into the Google Books repository, so I went to find an alternate item. Searches on Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White did not bring up any link to the scanned full text in Google Books, but rather directed me to Project Gutenberg.
 
This may not strike you as dramatic news, but it does make the use of Google docs more attractive to those working in academia, particularly the rising population of students.  Given that we already know that students are inclined to begin with Google before moving to traditional library resources, it’s possible that this functionality heightens the value of being discoverable in Scholar, if not in the more problematic Google Books.
 
For more on this new feature, read the official Google post:
[http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2012/05/find-facts-and-do-research-inside.html] http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2012/05/find-facts-and-do-research-inside.html
CNet also has worthwhile coverage:
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57435099-93/google-docs-facilitates-finding-facts-and-doing-research/] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57435099-93/google-docs-facilitates-finding-facts-and-doing-research/
 
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