"Google Generation" Myths

Are the kids born after 1993 really that different from older people when it comes to searching? An article from the Christian Science Monitor suggests that is not the case. The article is titled 'Google Generation' myths.

The article reports on a study that both kids and adults begin searches for information on search engines and that both groups bounce from source to source. The big difference between the two groups is the respect for copyright law and intellectual property. The kids are really bad in this regard.

Here are a few quotes relating to information literacy:

- Though students usually show a high degree of computer literacy, their "information literacy" (ability to find and absorb high-quality information) is often not good, the study says. They spend little time evaluating information found on the Internet. They need to be taught better skills for weighing the accuracy, relevance, and authority of what they find.

- To provide this help, libraries will have to change their image. Students often think of them as just places full of books, not high-tech information resources. That's true even of college students, 89 percent of whom begin their research using a general search engine rather than a library website. Nearly all of those college students were satisfied with their search. And that's the problem. If libraries are to be relevant, they must teach more sophisticated research methods.

Unclear on the Context: Refocusing on Information Literacy's Evaluative Component in the Age of Google

There is a LPP Special Issue on Libraries and Google now up. One of the articles is Unclear on the Context: Refocusing on Information Literacy's Evaluative Component in the Age of Google by Genevieve Williams.

From the article:

The advent of Google has provoked an uneasy alliance in academic librarianship. We marvel at its speed, flexibility, and simplicity, and simultaneously wonder when it will replace library websites and the resources they provide to students.

Our students arrive at college already familiar with, if not expert in, Internet searching; with the wealth of information available on the surface Web, why delve deeper? Proscribing searching the free Internet for resources is no longer a viable option, if in fact it ever was: with government-issued information going online, freely available bibliographic indexes such as PubMED and the Protein Data Bank, specialized primary resources in history and anthropology, and the growing Open Access movement, to prevent students from using Google actually does them a disservice.

The rise of Google calls upon academic libraries and librarians to evolve yet again, in a number of ways. One critical area of adaptation is information literacy. Stanley Wilder, in his article “Information Literacy Makes All the Wrong Assumptions” (B13), claims that among other things, information literacy removes the information students find from the disciplinary context in which they are to seek and use that information. In other words, proclaiming information literacy as a distinct discipline commits the very act of which librarians accuse Google: it decontextualizes information, turning it into a thing to be manipulated for its own sake rather than used for a particular purpose. The time has come for librarians to re-evaluate the definition, application, and context of information literacy: in particular, how these must adapt to the age of Google.

Google Librarian Central Blog

OK, there is now a Google Librarian Central Blog. I have not been to impressed with Google Librarian Central to date. Most of the suggestions and notes are simplistic to anyone who has studied Google a lot already which includes many librarians. In addition, the Google Librarian team has ignored several e-mails I have sent them including my offers to contribute content to the Google Librarian Newsletter. I realize they are busy but they really should respond even if it is a polite decline.

However, I am a big fan of Google. It is my favorite search engine and I use it all the time. I appreciate that Google is attempting to reach out to librarians and I will be paying attention to this blog. I just might find a good piece of information.

From the site:

I'm pleased to say that today, we're implementing one of your biggest requests. When we asked how we could improve the Google Librarian Newsletter, many of you said, "Make it a blog!" or "Send more up-to-date information." We've taken your feedback to heart, and we're doing just that. Starting today, the Librarian Center will make its home at http://librariancentral.blogspot.com, where you'll find the latest Google news, updates, and tips relevant to the librarian community. The blog includes links to the Newsletter Archive, the Your Stories page, and the Tools and Videos sections. And of course, we'll continue to add to these pages and develop new features.

We're excited about communicating Google's product and feature launches to you as they happen. You can even sign up to receive these blog posts by email, or choose to read them from your Google Personalized Homepage or Google Reader (or your preferred blog reader). For those of you who still prefer to hear from us on a quarterly basis, we'll continue to send out the Librarian Newsletter, which will include the "best of" the previous months' blog posts. As with many Google launches, consider this blog a beta test, open to refinements and changes over time. We'll be looking closely at your feedback, so please let us know what you think.

Create Your Own Search Engine

Google has launched a new service where websites can host custom created search engines based on Google. The Google Custom Search Engine (http://www.google.com/coop/cse/) is described as, "Harness the power of Google search to create a free Custom Search Engine that reflects your knowledge and interests. Specify the websites that you want searched - and integrate the search box and results into your own website."

That is right. You pick the web sites you want included. This service allows you to set-up a search that spam sites have no chance of intruding upon. Further, you can exclude sites which actually disagree with you! Your search engine of choice can now be just like your new service of choice. In the USA, liberals tend to watch CNN News and conservatives watch FOX News. Hey, now your search engine can be just the same! It is so annoying when opposing views get in the way of being informed...

One example of this is Real Climate (http://www.realclimate.org). The description of the site participation in the project notes, "RealClimate.org provides expert opinions on the science of climate change. Since this subject has become rather politicized, the quality of information available on the web varies. Using Google Custom Search Engine, they have created a searchable subset of the web that they believe provides the most reliable information. " By "most reliable information" the site owners mean those sites which agree with them. Since any scientist or intelligent person like Michael Crichton must be "politicized" for disagreeing with mainstream science it is best just to omit them from search results all together! I am sure the scientists of the early 17th century would have excluded any Galileo created sites from their search results too.

Just watch as junk science sites, historical revisionists, alternative medicine sites, etc. set up their own custom search engines. I can just see a site titled Holocaust Search Engine which only indexes sites which postulate that the Holocaust never happened. Or perhaps a Texas History Search which only includes sites which argue that Texas is illegally occupied by the USA. (These sites exist, I kid you not.) People like search results which agree with them. This is going to be popular with fringe groups as well as more mainstream society.

Not that I am entirely against this idea. It has real potential for areas which are not controversial. I may go out and create an Information Literacy Search Engine which only indexes good info lit sites. Or maybe an American Presidents Search Engine which indexes tons of good presidential history sites. Custom search engines can be good for K-12 schools as well for setting up safe sites to search for students. Spam sites are going to have trouble if this becomes a widely adopted technology.

It will be interesting to see how popular these custom Google search engines are and how different people are using them. Is search about to be divided up by special interests? Will people actually choose to use search engines that only provide results they agree with? Will censorship take on an acceptable face with this technology? Teaching students about using the Web and using critical thinking skills is getting harder and harder...

Ye olde Google News: Stories from the 1700s

Ye olde Google News: Stories from the 1700s. This article has details on what appears to be a great new service from Google. Old newspapers can now be searched via Google News. I did a few searches and I like the layout and breadth of articles. Unfortunately, much of the content requires a fee. I have no problem with paying for articles I need but most causal searchers will not. For this reason, Google should allow a filter to remove subscription searches from the results if a searcher desires it. This is definitely worth checking out though and sharing with students.

From the site:

Google News is getting a sense of the past to balance out its relentless focus on the present.

Google Inc. (Charts) has added the ability to search through more than 200 years of historical newspaper archives alongside the latest contemporary information now available on Google News, the market-leading Web search firm said Tuesday.

"The goal of the service is to allow users to explore history as it unfolded," said Anurag Acharya, a top Google engineer who helped develop the news archive search.

"Users can see how viewpoints changed over time for events, for ideas and for people," said Acharya, who also built the Google Scholar service for academic researchers and once was a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Ideas for Using the Web to Get a Book Published

I was talking to one of my colleagues today at the library. She was telling me about a relative who has written a manuscript but is having trouble finding a publisher. Apparently, there are thousands of want-to-be writers out there and getting attention is hard.

I provided her with the following idea. She asked me to write it down so she could send it to her relative. I decided to go ahead and post it to this blog as others may find it of interest.

1. Put part of your book on the Web. Find a good site designer and a Web host and post you chapters online. Find someone who knows how to do good search engine optimization (SEO) or learn about it yourself and promote your site.

2. Put Google Adsense on all your pages. This is described by Google as, “a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site — or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts — you'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.” The wonder of this system is that as your writing is visited by Web surfers, you have a chance to make money.

3. If you have a fiction book, only put the first half of the book online. Give enough good writing that visitors will want to buy the entire book. Make plenty of links on the site for purchasing.

4. Find a vanity press publisher who will print your book for a fee. You will be sent a small number of copies. However, make sure the publisher allows for print-on-demand ordering so that the books can be printed as they are ordered by customers.

5. It will take time and work but if you promote your site well and have a decent book, you should generate Web traffic, sell some books, and maybe have Google sending you a monthly check. If so, use this as an attention getting point for traditional publishers. Point out how many books you have sold, how many libraries own copies of the book, show key words you rank well for on the Web, etc. Use your current success to prove that you will be profitable and successful for a traditional publisher.

This model will not work for everyone. Many writers fail online too. However, if you believe you have a good book, are not afraid to learn about the Web, and can afford some risk, why not try a model similar to this to get attention? Good luck.

Google coming to Ann Arbor

Google coming to Ann Arbor. The Detroit Free Press reports that Google is coming to Michigan. Yeah, we can use the jobs. The report notes, "Michigan's battered economy will get a big psychological boost today when Google Inc., the high-flying Internet search engine giant, announces plans to hire up to 1,000 workers over the next five years for a new Ann Arbor-area facility."

This will expand on Google's current presence in Michigan. Currently, Google employees are working at the University of Michigan scanning books for Google Books. It looks like Ann Arbor will have quite the Google presence.

I really think Google needs to set up librarian panels to help in refining Google searches and to find other ways that Google services can be improved. Librarians are heavy users of Google and we are good at recognizing good searches and spam sites which are of no value to anyone but the website owner. We also help promote services like Google Books.

At the Google Librarian Center it is noted, "Librarians and Google have a similar mission: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We support librarians who work each day to further that mission. This site is a first step toward improving and expanding that support." And librarians want to support Google too. How about getting us more involved? I hope to see you in Ann Arbor...

Fourth Issue of the Google Librarian Newsletter

The newest Goolge Librarian Newsletter is up at http://www.google.com/librariancenter/email_nl/0606em.html.

Articles include:

How does Google Book Search work? In "Google Book Search: An Introduction," we explain how the project started, how we handle the display of books, how people are using it, and more.

Of course, with any project this big, there are multiple stages of development, and the challenge is making sure our search tools are as useful as possible all along the way. In "Libraries and Google/Google Book Search: No Competition!," RLG Senior Analyst Walt Crawford shares his thoughts on how Google and libraries can better work together, and offers his advice for improvements to Google Book Search.

If your patrons ask you about techniques for researching their genealogy, check out "Find a Page from your Past", an article by Googler and librarian Ben Bunnell about how people are using full-text book searches to find clues about their family history.

Google, the art of library science - and you

Google, the art of library science - and you. How do you use Google to help your patrons? Do you have neat stories to share? And are you willing to appear on a Google film to talk about it? This may be your chance to star!

From Google:

Librarians as the featured stars in a movie? We think that's an idea whose time has come. Submit your story or anecdote about an interesting way you've used a Google service or tool to help library users locate the information they're looking for, and there might be a bit part in a digital video movie in your future.

Your story could be about finding a photo of a patron's great aunt in a rare book using Google Book Search. Or showing students how to use News to immerse themselves in current events. Or using Google Earth to give inner-city kids a larger sense of the world and their place in it. Or any other new or novel ways you've employed Google in your work.

We've asked for submissions from librarians across the country, and we'll feature the most engaging stories in a short movie. The movie will premiere at the American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans, June 22-28, and will be featured prominently on Google's Librarian Center website.

This may be your chance to ham it up for the camcorders, so make sure you fill out the form below before May 23.

Searching for Dummies

Searching for Dummies. This is a column from the New York Times by Edward Tenner. He writes that many students seem to lack the skills to structure their searches so they can find useful information quickly on search engines like Google, Yahoo or even MSN.

I heard Dr. Tenner speak a few weeks back at the Google Library Symposium. He was a good speaker and I think this is a thought provoking article.

Please note this is at the New York Times. At the moment, the article is freely available but it is possible that it may get moved behind a firewall in the future. Currently, registration is free if that happens so you should still be able to get access.

From the site:

While some blame reality television, MP3 players, cellphones or the multitasking that juggles them all, the big change has been the Web. Beginning in the early 1990's, schools, libraries and governments embraced the Internet as the long promised portal to information access for all. And at the heart of their hopes for a cultural and educational breakthrough were superbly efficient search engines like Google and those of its rivals Yahoo and MSN. The new search engines not only find more, they are more likely to present usable information on the first screen.

Google modestly declares its mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." But convenience may be part of the problem. In the Web's early days, the most serious search engine was AltaVista. To use it well, a searcher had to learn how to construct a search statement, like, say, "Engelbert Humperdinck and not Las Vegas" for the opera composer rather than the contemporary singer. It took practice to produce usable results. Now, thanks to brilliant programming, a simple query usually produces a first page that's at least adequate — "satisficing," as the economist Herbert Simon called it.

The efficiency of today's search engines arises from their ability to analyze links among Web sites. Google led in ranking sites by how often they are linked to other highly ranked sites. It did so using an elaborate variation of a concept familiar in natural science, citation analysis. Instead of looking at which papers are cited most often in the most influential journals, it measures how often Web pages are linked to highly ranked sites — ranked by links to themselves.

Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference, Part Three

This is the third of three posts relating my observations on the Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference (better known as the Google Library Symposium) which was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on March 10th and 11th, 2006. This post will have my remarks regarding the speakers on March 11th.

Please note that I am doing my best to report what the speakers said. However, quotes might be slightly different than what the speaker actually said due to the fact I had to write it down while the speaker went on talking. Feel free to post and correct me if you are being quoted here incorrectly.

Ron Milne, Acting Director of University Library Services & Bodley's Librarian at Oxford, noted that the faculty at Oxford University are big supporters of digitizing collections. Indeed, members of the faculty are lobbying for which part of the collection to scan next. In regards to publishers and digitization, he said "Publishers will stay in business but their business model will have to change."

Paul Courant, Professor at the University of Michigan, talked about scale and digitization. He noted that digitization makes a local good a global good. Once scanned, it costs nothing to add new readers. He said that it no longer makes sense for most libraries to buy everything. Instead, librarians should concentrate on more specialized library specific collecting. He also noted that one consequence of digitization is that non-digitized materials will not be used by most patrons.

Hal Varien, Professor at UC Berkeley, talked about the value in what is being scanned. Most specifically, he claims the greatest value lies in digitizing out-of-print books which are still covered under copyright. He feels that the scanning of books fits the fair use test in the US based on his interpretations of Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation (2003). He ended by strongly arguing that the opt-in model for publisher inclusion in Google Books is unrealistic. He notes that up to 22% of requests for permission are never answered by publishers. This is because publishers are often unsure of the legal status of a work and because many other works have been orphaned and the rights may be split amongst multiple heirs who are not even aware of their legal rights to the work.

I was disappointed with the presentation of Karl Pohrt who is the owner of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor. Rather than describe it briefly, I have a more extensive post titled Most Disappointing Google Library Symposium Speaker.

Bruce James, CEO of the U. S. Government Printing Office, noted the steadily rising costs of higher education. He asked then why if we have one digital library why every campus needed a library at all? He contends that the growing cost issue in higher education will be dealt with and the closing of some libraries is going to happen as a result. He also strongly stated that the government will not rely on a private company such as Google to assure the authentic long-term access to government documents. However, he will be watching Google Books to learn from Google's mistakes and successes.

James Hilton, Associate Provost for Academic, Information and Instructional Technology Affairs and University Interm University Librarian at the University of Michigan, talked at length about the current state of copyright law in the USA. He noted that more and more protection is being afforded to smaller and smaller ideas. He said in this context, "The pure property view of information undermines the values of the academy."

Clifford Lynch closed the Symposium. He asked, will others be allowed to copy en masse all of the public domain stuff in Google Books? Who will be allowed to copy and rehost the entire public domain collection? If Google refuses this access, it would in essence lead to public domain content being reprivatized. He also noted that, "Digitization and the mass spread of the information is the best insurance for any preservation program."

That concludes my report on this excellent conference. I must say that my brain hurts from all the great ideas I heard during these two days!

Further observations on the conference can be found at the links below.

Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference, Part One
Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference, Part Two

Most Disappointing Google Library Symposium Speaker

Of all the Google Library Symposium speakers, I was most unhappy with Karl Pohrt. He is the owner of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor. I was hoping that he would discuss the topic at hand (digitization) and share with us ideas on how independent booksellers would be participating. What new economic models could these booksellers use from digitization projects either by working with libraries, Google, or on their own? How could the expertise of independent booksellers be translated into the online full-text environment?

He did not do this. Instead, he talked about the decline of the independent bookseller over the last several decades. He showed figures indicating that membership in the American Booksellers Association had declined by thousands.

I disagree that booksellers are disappearing. There are more now than ever and they are more accessible to individuals than the traditional bookstore had been in the past. You can buy books everywhere including online. Further, even outside of Amazon and the big chain stores, there are still a lot of independents out there. Many sell books on eBay or from websites out of their basements and they never join a trade association. Those traditional independent stores who have been able to change with the times (open up coffee shops, sell books online, find other revenue streams, etc.) have stayed open. Those who have not have closed. That is the way the economy works and it may be sad for those who lose out but it really was not in any way central to the topic of the Google Library Symposium.

He also made the preposterous claim that the decline of literacy skills and perhaps the decline of Western culture could be directly tied to the disappearance of independent booksellers. I really hadn't noticed that Western civilization was in decline. Perhaps he is in the school that believes that since all problems have not been solved, a Republican is in the White House, and that NASCAR is popular that all shall soon be at an end. Sorry, I do not buy that. Even if it is in decline, independent booksellers are not the heart of the solution to the problem.

I am sorry that Pohrt and others can not make a living in the same way they did 30 years ago. However, those booksellers who have survived into the new economy have something to offer libraries and the world at large via digitization projects. How can their knowledge, skills, and collections enhance the online reading experiences of the world? There are so many angles on this that could perhaps benefit scholars, casual readers, and the bottom line of the independent booksellers. Unfortunately, Pohrt failed to address any of this. He was a good speaker and was interesting. He did recommend a book on extreme digitization (Accelerando) and he noted how Google Books would never be able to replace browsing. He just missed saying much of significance relating to the topic of the Symposium.

Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference, Part Two

This is the second of three posts relating my observations on the Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference (better known as the Google Library Symposium) which was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on March 10th and 11th, 2006. This post will have my remarks regarding the afternoon speakers on March 10th.

Please note that I am doing my best to report what the speakers said. However, quotes might be slightly different than what the speaker actually said due to the fact I had to write it down while the speaker went on talking. Feel free to post and correct me if you are being quoted here incorrectly.

Ed Tenner, Professor and author from Princeton University, talked about the failure of search engines including Google to return the best results. He gave an example on search in Google on the search term “world history.” He also showed the Wikipedia article on this topic. He claimed that both failed to actually give the most meaningful results and that most searchers would not dig far enough to actually get the best stuff. He also noted that academic sites on the Web need to practice SEO. This stands for search engine optimization.

I heartily agree with Dr. Tenner. Commercial sites spend tons of time and money trying to trick the search engines into believing their sites are the best. Academic sites do not do this and the result is searches in search engines which are sometimes bad. Why shouldn’t academic sites use some SEO white hat tricks? With the built-in advantage of high Trust Rank of .edu or other domains, a little optimization will go a long way to making search engine results better. And there is little chance of harm for most academic sites for trying some SEO. What are the odds that Google would ban or significantly penalize stanford.edu, msu.edu, harvard.edu, etc. for making an SEO mistake?

Jean-Claude Guedon, Professor at the University of Montreal, discussed what he thought could be a new algorithm for Google or another search engine. He said, “Using the literature review chapters from doctoral dissertations as citation analysis would give a constantly updating view of knowledge.” As dissertations are written in most fields, this is a good idea. It would be virtually impossible for spammers to infiltrate the dissertations so links appearing in these dissertations would be more than likely the best on the Web for the topic at hand. Can you imagine if dissertation link citations from Viagra related dissertations actually determined which Viagra sites were at the top of Google search results? I can just hear the screams from some webmasters now if this was implemented…

Suzanne BeDell, Vice President of ProQuest Information and Learning, presented a different picture. She argued a view some publishers may take. She noted that, “The Google dark digital archive will go live eventually. When this happens, the publishers will lose control of their content. They should be concerned and so should librarians as this will stifle future publishing.”

Adam Smith, who is in charge of Google Scholar and Google Books, finished up the day. He claimed that the media gets the Google library project wrong. Google is not giving away copies of all books and that it fully respects copyright law. He said that Google was trying to figure out, “how to enable, create, and connect a myriad of links that connect online and offline objects.” He also announced a new sales tool that will allow publishers to sell online access to books via Google Books. I am also pleased that I got Adam’s e-mail address. I will e-mail him soon with some questions.

Further observations on the conference can be found at the links below. I will add the links when my posts are ready so if you see this right away they may lack a link.

Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference, Part One
Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference, Part Three

Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference, Part One

This is the first of three posts relating my observations on the Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference (better known as the Google Library Symposium) which was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on March 10th and 11th, 2006. This post will have my remarks regarding the morning speakers on March 10th.

Please note that I am doing my best to report what the speakers said. However, quotes might be slightly different than what the speaker actually said due to the fact I had to write it down while the speaker went on talking. Feel free to post and correct me if you are being quoted here incorrectly.

Also note that there is a blog dedicated to this symposium at http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/sltsymposium/.

Mary Sue Coleman, President of the University of Michigan, opened the symposium. She said that the idea of putting all of the University of Michigan books online was a long desired goal and that “We believed in this forever.” She also said though that the U of M believed in copyright laws and that “Students will not be reading Harry Potter online in their dorms.”

Barbara Allen, Director of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, talked about how researchers use online versus print resources. She noted as an example the use of an old set of economic journals that were used 692 times in print but over twelve thousand times online. She also invoked the image of the Great Library of Alexandria by saying that the Google library initiative could build the “greatest library the world has ever known.”

Michael Keller, University Librarian at Stanford University, talked about the financial reason that should encourage publishers to embrace the Google library initiative. He said, “The sale of books increases when there are book excerpts online. It is to the benefit of the publishers to digitize books.” He also called for librarians to “defend fair use as it lifts old books.”

Karin Wittenberg, University Librarian at the University of Virginia, noted that the cooperation of the publishers was not necessarily needed as that “mere digitization does not violate copyright.” She claimed that “Google digitization is one of the most important developments of my career. This will change everything.” She also said that she was “irked by the opposition of some librarians, publishers, and authors” to the Google endeavor.

One interesting comment came from a member of the audience who asked about dedigitization. What do we do with online only material? Will Wikipedia be available 1000 years from now? How about online only publications like blogs and some government documents? What if there is a disaster (or simply changing technology) that makes all this material inaccessible? Are libraries making print backups?

Finally, Tim O’Reilly (founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media), talked about the need to get publisher buy-in for the Google project. He said, “There is a need to give a financial incentive to encourage online publication because most people will not buy a physical book.” (To which I reply, have you not heard of Google Adsense? Slap the code on any page and Google does all the work of getting relevant advertisers. Content can and will generate cash without ever even printing a book.) He also talked about a neat project his company was doing called Rough Cuts which allowed subscribers to read a book as it was being written.

Further observations on the conference can be found at the links below. I will add the links when my posts are ready so if you see this right away they may lack a link.

Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference, Part Two
Scholarship and Libraries in Transition Conference, Part Three

Censoring Google in China

Censoring Google in China. What a huge difference the Chinese government censorship of Google is having on search results. Via the Coming Anarchy Blog, I learned about how dramatic it can be.

Click here for a Google Image search of Tiananmen on the US Google and here for the same search on the Chinese Google.

Where are the tanks in the Chinese version? They do not exist! Very interesting.

When we talk about censorship in the United States, we are never talking about it at this level. I think it is safe to assume that the difference in results is also just as obvious in the regular Chinese Google Web search. This, coupled with Yahoo selling out a Chinese dissident and the madness over the Danish Islam cartoons, does not bode well. Expect more censorship by foreign regimes and groups in the future. I just hope we as librarians are just as willing to confront censorship issues caused by groups other than the US government or fundamentalist Christians. This overseas censorship is even scarier...

How Does Google Determine Which Web Sites Are the Most "Trusted"?

How Does Google Determine Which Web Sites Are the Most "Trusted"? The new online edition of Google Librarian Newsletter is now available.

There are two short articles included. This is one of them. It is written by Matt Cutts, Software Engineer, Google. He is well know on the Web from his Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO blog which gives tips to Webmasters.

The article does explain the basics of how Google determines which sites are trusted. If you have done no research on this topic, you will find this of interest. If you are one of the many librarians who has already done research and discussed this topic with other librarians, there is probably nothing new here. (Do I work at the only Reference Desk in the world where reference librarians discuss the Google "secret sauce", read threads at SEO forums like WebMaster World, and use what we learn to modify our library instruction lesson plans and help patrons find information? I think not. Perhaps Google has not realized how educated many librarians are about how Google works already.)

From the site:

This question goes to the heart of what we do. You already know the short answer: Google uses more than 100 different factors, including the PageRank algorithm, to determine whether a site is trusted or reputable. If you think of the internet as a democracy, a web page that links to another page is "voting" for the value of the page. As we explain in our Technology Overview, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives. But that's not the end of the story. If Page A itself has more votes from other pages, the vote carries more weight. Or to put it another way, if more people trust your site, your trust is more valuable.

In addition to using the PageRank algorithm, we automatically analyze the content of pages we crawl. This goes beyond scanning page-based text, which webmasters can easily manipulate through meta-tags. We also look at factors like fonts and the placement of words on a page. And we examine the content of neighboring pages, which can provide more clues as to whether the page we're looking at is trusted and will be relevant to users.

Google Librarian Newsletter

Google Librarian Newsletter. Google has launched a new way to communicate with librarians. The first issue of the Google Librarian Newsletter is online. Google plans on publishing this on a quarterly basis.

In the words of Google, "In an effort to keep those conversations going, we're launching this newsletter. Consider it a first step toward what we hope will be a long and mutually beneficial relationship. We anticipate sending it out quarterly, with the occasional special feature as appropriate."

They are also seeking feedback from librarians and have a special e-mail address for librarians to use for this purpose.

Here are two suggestions from me:

1. Google should seriously consider using the expertise of the library community to help make the Google index better. Many of us surf extensively in doing our jobs (particularly reference work) and we find spam sites in the index all the time. What if Google had a special page librarians could use to report this spam? Reports from this page would be given faster attention than those from the general community.

Google should require proof that users of this feature are librarians. Hence, some proving of identity would be required. Also, some training should also be offered either online or at conferences. But as a whole, why not? Google would get a better index and librarians would get a better Google to help find information for patrons.

2. Google should consider getting into the open source journal movement. Libraries are being killed by predatory journal owners who are taking work produced by university faculty and then reselling it back to the universities at a continually inflated price. Our budgets can not keep up.

What if Google started hosting open source journals? How about Google Journals? Google could provide the web space and the publicity and maybe appoint initial members of a journal board. From there, the journal could run itself and a free method of distributing scholarly peer reviewed material will have been born. This would not cost Google much money but would generate considerable good will. And it would almost assure that high quality scholarly research would do well in search engines and be found by students and researchers.

I am sure I will have more ideas for Google in the future...