Scholar Google - digital library services

[Liblicense-L Listowner <liblicen@pantheon.yale.edu>]

Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 10:29:24 +0100
From: Norbert Lossau <lossau@ub.uni-bielefeld.de>
To: Liblicense-L Listowner <liblicen@pantheon.yale.edu>
Subject: Scholar Google - digital library services

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The scholar-version of Google did not come as surprise. The key question
for me as Library Manager is the potential impact on the digital services
of libraries. Here are two conclusions:

1. Learn from the success of Google and other internet search engines 
and take your own actions

Google, Yahoo or Scirus are popular due to their ease and comfort of use,
their broad scope of content (including all types of online resources) and
advanced search and display functionalities.

As libraries we need to learn much more and faster from these services
than we have done so far.

TO DO: Change our local digital library and metasearch systems user-
interfaces, functionalities, performance etc. Bielefeld University Library
has developed and implemented a first version of a next generation
metasearch system which is publicly available (since June 2004) at:  
http://base.ub.uni-bielefeld.de. More information can be found in a D- Lib
Magazine article (Search engine technology and digital libraries :  
moving from theory to practice. September 2004,
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september04/lossau/09lossau.html

2. Re-use commercial services, work with them in order to ensure their
quality BUT don't stop your own efforts

Local libraries will have increasingly to build in external services (such
as Scholar Google or Scirus) as complementary search & retrieval service
into their local resource discovery environment. The transfer of your
local metasearch technology to a similar type of search engine technology
used by internet search engines (e.g. as offered by Fast Search &
Transfer) will enable you to integrate these external services seamlessly
(e.g. via XML gateway) into your local system.

BUT libraries should not rely solely(!) on commercial services as those
depend ultimately on the stock-market. The success of commercial services
does not let us from the hook to drive our own efforts to improve search
services in order to meet the expectations of our users.

Norbert Lossau 
Bielefeld University Library, Germany 
Director