December 26, 2005

CiteSeer Offers New Feature; Mirrors of Database Also Added

Years before Google Scholar was launched, Professor Lee Giles, from Penn State University was online with a specialty database named CiteSeer (some also might also know it as ResearchIndex). CiteSeer search technology continues to be developed. This database offers access to "scholarly literature" found on the open web in several disciplines including information technology, computer science, telecom, and more. It's a GREAT tool (a clear understatement). More than five years ago when Chris and I were co-authoring The Invisible Web, it was one of our favorite tools to write and talk about. It remains on my select list of resources that are a must for any researcher in the fields I've listed above.

So, why mention it today?

Dr. Giles has informed me that:

+ CiteSeer now offers "acknowledgement search." He writes: You can search the acknowledgements of all papers in CiteSeer for funding agencies, individuals, deities, etc. To my knowledge, we are the first to do this.

+ I've also noticed tht the CiteSeer database and search interface is now mirrored at: ++ MIT ++ University of Zürich ++ National University of Singapore

CiteSeer, Smeal Search and More Another database, SMEALSearch, is available. It uses the CiteSeer crawling and search technology to make "scholarly" papers available for those with a research interest in business.

+ CiteSeer received an honorable mention in the 5th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards.

+ In June, legendary librarian and reference reviewer, Peter Jacso, published a review of Google Scholar and had some very positive comments about CiteSeer.

+ On a personal note, the work of Dr. Lee Giles continues to be of the most important inspirations/motivators in my interest in specialty search tools. This ResourceShelf post offers links to learn more about his work. Even more here.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:21 PM | Permalink

December 19, 2005

Specialty Databases (Verticals) The Focus Of A Wall Street Journal Article

A few weekends ago Wall Street Journal reporter, Kevin Delaney, gave me a call asking for a few ideas, thoughts, and suggestions about useful specialized databases (aka verticals) that would be of interest to WSJ readers.

Today, the article was published and it's titled, "Beyond Google." You'll find it linked here. However, at least for the moment, Kevin's story is only available to WSJ subscribers.

A couple of quick comments and notes:

1) Thanks Kevin for asking for my suggestions and for the quote. You should know that for each database suggested and included in the final article, 40-50 more could have been included and received a well-deserved mention. I had to limit my picks for obvious reasons. Of course, Kevin spoke to others and also included their suggestions.

2) The "Beyond Google" headline is great. The word Google has a way of drawing peoples attention and the title of the headline is often the title of presentations I give. Why? A presentation titled, "Learn about Specialty Databases" does not pack in the crowds. Tossing the word Google into the title, does.

Specialty tools do not replace general purpose large web engines like Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Gigablast, Exalead, and others. A web researcher should have a good working knowledge of both general databases and specialty tools. Plus, in terms of some of my presentations, the word "Google" gets the crowd in the door and then I have time to not only talk about Google (many don't have any idea of what it can offer) but also have time to talk about the great useful stuff being developed by AJ, Yahoo, and elsewhere. So in reality it's a two pronged presensation. As I posted on Friday, it's clear that many people who use these and other tools have little to no idea of how these services work and what they offer.

+ General web engines (The full landscape, how to take full advantage of some of their services, creating better queries). These days it can also include time letting the audience know about verticals that these companies also provide like Yahoo Audio Search.

+ Specialized databases (verticals) the power and often time saving capabilities they offer. The challenge for many is just knowing about them.

3) If you read the blog on a regular basis, you'll likely notice that Kevin used several suggestions that I've written about on our site. Cool!

4) I was especially pleased to see the WSJ article mention the wonderful RegLightGreen bibliographic database and NetLibrary, available for free from many libraries that offers the full text of thousands of books. Remember, as I wrote in this guest column for BetaNews, public, university, and many other types of libraries offer FREE, 24x7x365, access from any web computer (no need to go to the library) to a full range of specialized databases that often offer content not found in web engines (full text journals, newspapers, magazines, reference books, etc.) OR packaged in such a way to add extra value to the data. Plus, these databases tend to offer search capabilities not found from general web engines. Every library offers different service and databases. The easiest to learn what your library offers is to either look at their web site or make a quick call.

Postscript: I'm happy to report that at least for the moment, it's the most popular story on the WSJ site today. Yes, I think the public is beginning to understand the value of specialized tools.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:27 PM | Permalink

November 21, 2005

Updates and Improvements Made to U.S. Government's Science.gov Search Site; IRS Web Site Redesigns for Better Site Search

Government Computing News has two stories today about two U.S. Governmet organizations making improvements to their search offerings.

First, Science.gov goes 3.0, reports that the metaserch tool that features science info from a variety of government organizations and sites (across 30 databases and 1,800 Web sites) is online with improved search technology and new features.

From the article: Version 3 of Science.gov, which went operational last week, incorporates bibliographic information into its searches. The feature, dubbed ?MetaRank,? ranks the relevance of data to the search term by using title, author, date, abstract and other keyword identifiers. It places those data sources that appear to be closest to what the user wants highest in the list of results. Version 3 also enjoys a number of other new features. Boolean searching has been modified so that the rules more closely resemble those used by commercial search engines. Users can now search in specific fields, such as dates or author. Another new feature displays immediate views of data before the results of the search are fully returned.

Science.gov is powered with technology from DeepWeb Technologies.

Second, IRS improves Web site search function for users, looks at a redesigned version of the IRS web site that's now online.

New on the IRS.gov site is a row of navigation buttons for individuals, businesses, nonprofits, charities and tax professionals. Visitors to the site can search by keyword or search term. The ?Search? button aims to be more intuitive than the current ?Go? button.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:10 PM | Permalink

October 7, 2005

Review Of GlobalSpec Engineering Search Engine

A Look at a Tool for Engineers: GlobalSpec from Shirl Kennedy over at Resourceshelf gives you a nice rundown on the GlobalSpec search engine, "by engineers, for engineers." If you need engineering related info, this targeted crawler aims to please.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:50 AM | Permalink

October 5, 2005

New Content Added to Elsevier's Scirus Science-Specific Database

Scirus is a specialty web database that focuses on science-specific material from publishing powerhouse Elsevier. Scirus combines open web material with content from many specialty databases (both free and fee). Today, Scirus announced a new partnership with the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) to include its collection of theses and dissertations from NDLTD member institutes in the Scirus database.

Scirus has indexed over 200,000 theses and dissertations, in more than twelve languages, including English, Portugese, French, German, Spanish and Taiwanese, among others. The theses and dissertations are from institutes around the world, including their largest content contributors Library and Archives Canada, Hong Kong University, Brazilian Institute of Scientific and Technical Information (IBICT), MIT, University of Uppsala, National Sun Yat-Sen University of Taiwan (NSYSU) and Virginia Tech.

Scirus has been mentioned several times on the SEW Blog and it's a database that I plan to "pimp" in the near future. Scirus received an honorable mention in the Specialty Database category during this year's Search Engine Watch Search Awards.

Fast Fact: One of the largest, if the not the largest, database of dissertations comes from UMI/ProQuest and contains more than 2 million titles dating back to 1861. Newer disserations (past two years) can be searched and previewed online for free. It's also possible to order the full text and have it delivered via mail or online.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:54 PM | Permalink

June 10, 2005

Scirus Adds New Sources

This week Scirus, the search vertical/metasearch tool that focuses on science information from both the open web and specialized sources, launched the Scirus Repository Search Service. It provides direct access to searchable repositories of material (often full text) from universities and other organizations. You can select repositories and many other databases via the Scirus advanced search page.

On Tuesday, access to T-Space repository from the University of Toronto with over 3,000 documents was made directly accessible via Scirus. The full text of all documents is searchable.

Today, I noticed that the Caltech Collection of Open Digital Archives from the California Institute of Technology is also now directly accessible via Scirus. The archives contains theses, technical reports, preprints, self-archived journal, and other material.

Another excellent metasearch tool that allows you to simultaneously search institutional repositories and other databases containing freely available "academically-oriented digital resources" is OAIster from the University of Michigan. As of today, you can search more than 5,482,333 records from 487 institutions via OAIster.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:06 PM | Permalink

March 22, 2005

Scirus Adds 13 Million Patents to Database

Scirus, Elsevier's science-specific web database that offers access to content from a targeted crawl of the open web along with material from many science focused specialized/deep web databases (including full text articles some free, some fee-based) has enhanced their service today.

Scirus now provides searchable access and direct links to more than 13,000 million "scientific" patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) and the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Fielded searching is available using their search syntax. The advanced search interface also allows you to limit your query to material from one or more patent offices.

As for how patents are chosen for inclusion in Scirus, Elsevier said in a news release that the patents are, "selected on the criteria of being either scientific in nature or relevant to the scientific community based upon categorization used by patent offices."

I was unable to find any documentation about how often new patents will be added to the Scirus collection. It would also be useful if Scirus allowed you to refine your search to only patents from a serp.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:42 PM | Permalink

February 3, 2005

SciNet For Science & Tech Info

Looking for science and technology information? You might check out SciNet, a long standing service that provides search results focused to this area. It lists thousands of sites that have been submitted over the past years plus has a collection of photos in different scientific areas -- though unfortunately, you can review these via thumbnails all at once. This site also offers original content on various topics.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:17 AM | Permalink

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