<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">NFAIS Enotes, 2014, No. 1</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">Written and compiled by Jill
O’Neill</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">Google Scholar, Jane Austen and
Changes in Scholarly Search</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">In going through old documents on a computer recently, I came across a
short piece I had written back in 2006 about Google Scholar and a feature it
had added that was supposed to direct researchers to recently published items.
At that time, Google Scholar was experiencing serious issues, poor metadata
quality being the most significant one. Relevancy ranking algorithms were
mysterious. The scope of the content included in the service was unclear. Full-text
availability was really a hit-or-miss proposition. Overall, as an information
service, there were drawbacks for the too-casual student. <br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">The search query I used in that evaluation was ["Jane
Austen" Church clergy Georgian], a standard query that I have used since
Google Scholar was launched in 2004 as a way of tracking the service’s scope
and added enhancements. In June of 2006, that query yielded a paltry 127
results. Run in 2014, that same query yielded 1,220 results. </span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"><br>
<span style="color:black">What is now included in that larger result set in
2014? On my first page of results, the ten links presented included six scanned
titles searchable on Google Books, one primary cited document from the
Hampshire County Council in the UK,
and three items from digital repositories. Running a query from the sciences
such as [alkaloids “conium maculatum” livestock] retrieves a smaller set of
hits, but all of the items on the first page are either from journal publishers
(Elsevier, Sage) or specialized aggregators such as InformaHealthCare.com</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">A set of 2013
exchanges on the Web4Lib listserv outlined what some of the pros and cons of
using Scholar in place of a discovery service were in the eyes of the
information professional. The service is free and comes with a user-friendly
interface, <b><u>but</u></b> there is no
clear outline of what is covered in the resource and Google could pull the plug
on it at any time without apology. Local holdings aren’t included in Google
Scholar, which puts librarians at a disadvantage. They can’t make clear to
patrons what content is immediately accessible and what may entail a waiting
period. <br>
<br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">Google
has not worried too much about soothing that irritation. On the Google Scholar
FAQ, in response to the question <b>Do you cover PubMed? JStor? Elsevier?,</b>
the response reads “<i>We index research articles and abstracts from most major
academic publishers and repositories worldwide, including both free and
subscription sources. To check current coverage of a specific source in Google
Scholar, search for a sample of their article titles in quotes</i>.” Even that
response is clearly directed towards the primary end user, rather than the
information professional who may be trying to assist that user with their
research. (<a href="http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html#coverage">http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html#coverage</a>)
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">Of
course, given the rapidly expanding options available, scholarship need not
take the form of either journal articles or monographs. I was much taken by a
digital humanities project that reproduced an art gallery visited by Austen in
1813. (<a href="http://www.whatjanesaw.org/">http://www.whatjanesaw.org/</a>). The project was sufficiently impressive to
capture attention from the main stream press (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/books/what-jane-saw-is-an-online-trip-for-jane-austen-fans.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/books/what-jane-saw-is-an-online-trip-for-jane-austen-fans.html</a>)
. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">There was
a journal article written about the project, one identified by the following
preferred citation:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">Barchas,
Janine (2012) "Digitally Reconstructing the Reynolds Retrospective
Attended by Jane Austen in 1813: A Report on E-Work-in-Progress," ABO:
Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830: Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article
13.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.2.1.12">http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.2.1.12</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">Available
at: <a href="http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol2/iss1/13">http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol2/iss1/13</a>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">The problem is that<b><i>
What Jane Saw</i></b></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">
is not adequately captured in that traditional scholarly article, at least in
part because the article is focused on the building of the digital environment
rather than on the author’s scholarship which actually focuses on the concept
of celebrity in the Georgian era. The more traditional outputs of her
scholarship (article and monograph) have appropriate metadata assigned. The
digital construction itself, however, is poorly served. Unlike the citation
provided above, the digital exhibit lacks reliable metadata and thus can become
easily obscured to subsequent searching.
Yes, you can find <b><i>What Jane Saw</i></b> in Google Scholar if
you search using that phrase, but it displays the author’s name not as <i>Janine Barchas</i> but instead as <i>WJ Saw</i>.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"><br>
At this year’s NFAIS Annual Conference,
we’ll be hearing from scholars who are making similarly creative
investigations, leveraging digital content and new technologies. Yet Google isn’t particularly concerned about
the long-term retrievability of some of this digital content in the context of standard library practice. In this context, it may be interesting to read
the work of younger scholars, in particular, this related paper by Dutch
researchers entitled, <i>Just Google It: Digital Research Practices of
Humanities Scholars</i> (<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.2434">http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.2434</a>).
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"><br>
While limited to Dutch and Flemish humanists, the authors’ study concludes that
“<b><i>It is probable that considerations of convenience supersede the
principles of provenance and context. Google might not cover all the relevant
sources, but it does probably cover the most</i></b><i>. Furthermore in
terms of efficiency, relying on Google instead of searching in multiple
alternative more refined search systems, within the websites of specialized
institutions, and subsequently comparing the results, saves time and energy</i>”
Added emphasis in boldface is mine. Further on in the paper, the
authors essentially shrug off concerns that digital practice is unlikely to
mirror analog library and information science practice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">Throughout
2013, there was an on-going discussion documenting issues surrounding use of
the tool in a series of BioMedCentral articles. Jean Francois Gehanna (University of Rouen) delved into the use of Google
Scholar for purposes of developing systematic reviews: (<a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6947/13/7">http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6947/13/7</a>)
and Martin Boeker of the Uniklinik-freburg.de took that work a step further (<a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/13/131">http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/13/131</a>).
To clarify, systematic reviews emerged in recent decades as a way of providing
health-care professionals with data from a broad spectrum of research trials in
order to enable evidence-based practices. Quoting from a leading institute<i>:
Systematic reviews aim to find as much as possible of the research relevant to
the particular research questions, and use explicit methods to identify what
can reliably be said on the basis of these studies… Such reviews then go on to
synthesize research findings in a form which is easily accessible to those who
have to make policy or practice decisions. In this way, systematic reviews
reduce the bias which can occur in other approaches to reviewing research
evidence</i>. [<a href="http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=67">http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=67</a>].
The work by both Gehanna and Boeker indicate that Google Scholar is inadequate
to the search and recall necessary to ensure a high quality systematic review.
Lack of precision was a major drawback to its use. <br>
<br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia">The
library community largely agrees with this assessment (<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3733758/">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3733758/</a>),
although now and again, there are those suggesting that discovery services do
no better at the task <span style="color:black">(</span><a href="http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2013/11/is-summon-alone-good-enough-for.html#.UqDZ8_RDsRp">http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2013/11/is-summon-alone-good-enough-for.html#.UqDZ8_RDsRp</a><span style="color:black">). Others suggest
that the problem lies less with discovery service technologies and more with
“weaknesses in the educational process for systematic review methodologies, and
in the level of methodological expertise on the part of the authors, editors,
and reviewers of the scholarly journals.” (<a href="http://etechlib.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/whats-wrong-with-google-scholar-for-systematic-reviews/">http://etechlib.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/whats-wrong-with-google-scholar-for-systematic-reviews/</a>). The information and research communities seem
to be at odds over what should be accepted as best practices in service to scholarship.
</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Among content providers and librarians, it is understood that Google
views Scholar as a something of a low-priority service. Google knows the tool
gets used and they do occasionally beef up the offering, but the aura of being
Anurag Acharya’s private “20% time” project still remains. There were numerous upgrades
in 2012 but only two improvements in 2013. The most recent upgrade in November had
to do with saving discovered items from a search query – essentially mirroring
most bibliographic management software. (<a href="http://googlescholar.blogspot.com/2013/11/google-scholar-library.html">http://googlescholar.blogspot.com/2013/11/google-scholar-library.html</a>).
It is an improvement but not an overly dramatic one and, again, Google’s
target is the end-user rather than the information professional. To
me, however, the most telling indicator
of Google’s valuation of Scholar lies in the fact that Scholar has not yet been
optimized for Google Now, the voice command interface that works with mobile
and wearable technologies – everything from the Google search app on one’s iPod
Touch up through Google Glass. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Meanwhile, Google has been upgrading other varieties of search, as
well as acquiring companies like DeepMind and Nest. Tech analysts have their various theories as
to Google’s strategic direction (the Internet of Things, etc.), but what does
it mean in the context of what NFAIS member organizations do? Click through on the
following headline links to two stories regarding deep learning initiatives at
Google:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">(1) If this doesn't terrify you... Google's computers OUTWIT their
humans</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">'Deep learning' clusters crack coding problems their top engineers
can't</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/15/google_thinking_machines/">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/15/google_thinking_machines/</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">From the story: <i>By working
hard to give its machines greater capabilities, and local, limited
intelligence, Google can crack classification problems that its human experts
can't solve</i>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">(2) More on DeepMind: AI Startup to Work Directly With Google’s
Search Team</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"><a href="http://recode.net/2014/01/27/more-on-deepmind-ai-startup-to-work-directly-with-googles-search-team/">http://recode.net/2014/01/27/more-on-deepmind-ai-startup-to-work-directly-with-googles-search-team/</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">From the story: “…<i>sources
said Deep Mind is actually being inserted into Google’s oldest team: Search. Or
as search is known at Google today, the “Knowledge Group” – so called because
it no longer finds keywords on Web pages, but instead connects larger concepts</i>.”
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Even now, Google is expanding beyond what we might think of as
“simple” linked data and into a more complex and challenging environment of
presenting useful answers.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Last year, I could run a very broad query “Jane Austen” and Google
would pop up one of its enhanced Knowledge cards. Off to the right of my
screen, a box displays a portrait of Jane Austen, her birth and death dates,
etc. The box wasn’t all that useful
except in the most limited function of looking up such information. (Google’s
designers of that card display didn’t think that links referring the user to
Austen’s novels should take precedence over links to film and television
adaptations of her works, anymore than they would think to include links to the
digital scholarship of <b><i>What Jane Saw</i></b>.) Still, that display was most users’
introduction to the idea of linked data aggregating answers in response to a
search.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">This month, a new wrinkle has emerged. If I run the query I noted at the beginning
of this issue of Enotes (“Jane Austen” Church clergy Georgian) in the
mainstream version of Google today, I will see grey notations with each hit
indicating the source of that link if Google deems that source to be “widely
recognized as notable online” (See <a href="http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2014/01/more-information-about-websites-to-help.html">http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2014/01/more-information-about-websites-to-help.html</a>).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Suddenly the user sees a recent book title published by Ashgate.
Click on a small downward-pointing grey arrow and Google displays a smaller
Google Knowledge box that notes what Ashgate is --an academic book and journal
publisher based in the UK.
Does that information about Ashgate (taken from Wikipedia) lend credibility to
the book title <b><i>Jane Austen’s Anglicanism</i></b> in the mind of the user?
Conceivably. The link below that one is to a relevant PDF document posted by
the University of Nebraska – Lincoln,
where the author of that title teaches. Does Google plan on linking up that data
for the researcher as well? Conceivably.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Not all links get this indicator. A link to Irene Collins’ <b><i>Jane
Austen and The Clergy</i></b> on Google Books receives no such bolstering. A
little deeper into the search results, there are such notable sources listed as
the University of
Florida and Goodreads. Still, Google is making an attempt to provide
users with the means of discovery of reliable content as well as to some entity
that might aid in gaining access.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Google isn’t delivering particularly worthwhile information from
an educational or research standpoint, but it’s easy to see how something more
competitive might eventually emerge. Google has the capability of matching up
Jane Austen with book content from Ashgate Publishing as well as an honors
thesis housed in the University
of Florida’s digital
repository. When they succeed in harnessing their machines’ “deep learning” –
the fruit of their engineers’ creativity as well as the DeepMind acquisition --
will they be building the advanced information service of the future? At that
point, will we even be consider it to be an advanced service? <br>
<br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">There are members of NFAIS that are leveraging linked data in ways
similar to Google’s Knowledge Graph approach. When they emerge, they will be
far more authoritative than Google’s current tool, but will users notice? They will, if NFAIS members move nimbly.
Sometimes it is this community’s advantage to be focused on satisfying user needs
that Google doesn’t deem a priority. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<div style="border-style:none none dotted;border-bottom-color:windowtext;border-bottom-width:3pt;padding:0in 0in 1pt">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;padding:0in"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Want to learn more about how new forms of content and big data
techniques are changing publishing? Plan to attend the 2014 NFAIS Annual
Conference, <i>Giving Voice to Content: Re-envisioning the Business
of Information,</i> scheduled for February 23-25, 2014 in Philadelphia, PA
(see: <u><a href="http://nfais.org/event?eventID=530">http://nfais.org/event?eventID=530</a></u>). </span></p>
<div style="border-style:none none dotted;border-bottom-color:windowtext;border-bottom-width:3pt;padding:0in 0in 1pt">
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;border:none;padding:0in"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">2013 NFAIS Supporters</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Access Innovations,
Inc.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Accessible Archives,
Inc.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">American Psychological
Association/PsycINFO</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">American Theological
Library Association</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Annual Reviews</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">CAS</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">CrossRef</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Data Conversion
Laboratory, Inc.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Defense</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> Technical Information
Center</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">EBSCO Information
Services</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Getty Research
Institute</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">The H. W. Wilson
Foundation</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Information Today,
Inc.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">IFIS</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Modern Language
Association</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">OCLC</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Philosopher’s Information Center</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">ProQuest</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">RSuite CMS</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">Scope</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"> e-Knowledge Center</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Georgia;color:black">TEMIS, Inc.</span></p><div><br></div>-- <br>Jill O'Neill<br><a href="mailto:jillmwo@gmail.com">jillmwo@gmail.com</a><br>
<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/jilloneill">http://www.linkedin.com/in/jilloneill</a>
</div>